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WHITTIER-LAND 



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WHITTIER'S BIRTHPLACE 



WHITTIER-LAND 

a l^antitJooft of l^ortlj €^^cx 

COXTAIXIXG MANY ANECDOTES OF AND POEMS 

BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

NEVER BEFORE COLLECTED 



SAMUEL T. PICKARD 

Author of "Life and Letters of John Greexleaf Whittier' 
ILLUSTRATED WITH MAP AND ENGRAVINGS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1904 






LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 

APR 21 1904 
CoDyrlflfht Entry 

CLASS ^ XXc. No. 

COPY B 



COPYRIGHT 1904 BY SAMUEL T. PICKARD 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published April iqo^ 



PREFACE 

This volume is designed to meet a call from tourists who 
are visiting the Whittier shrines at Haverhill and Ames- 
bury in numbers that are increasing year by year. Besides 
describing the ancestral homestead and its surroundings, 
and the home at Amesbury, an attempt is made to answer 
such questions as naturally arise in regard to the localities 
mentioned by Whittier in his ballads of the region. Many 
anecdotes of the poet and several poems by him are now 
first published. It is with some hesitancy that I have ven- 
tured to add a chapter upon a phase of his character that 
has never been adequately presented : I refer to his keen 
sense of humor. It will be understood that none of the 
impromptu verses I have given to illustrate his playful 
moods were intended by him to be seen outside a small 
circle of friends and neighbors. This playfulness, however, 
was so much a part of his character from boyhood to old 
age that I think it deserves some record such as is here 
given. 

For those who are interested to inquire to whom refer 
passages in such poems as " Memories," " My Playmate," 
and " A Sea Dream," I now feel at liberty to give such 
information as could not properly be given at the time 
when I undertook the biography of the poet. 

If any profit shall be derived from the sale of this book, 
it will be devoted to the preservation and care of the 
homes here described, which will ever be open to such 
visitors as love the memory of Whittier. c ^ P 

Whittier Home, Amesbury, Mass., 
March, 1904. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. Haverhill i 

II. Amesbury 53 

III. Whittier's Sense of Humor 105 

IV. Whittier's Uncollected Poems 127 

Index ^55 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 



Whittier's Birthplace Frontispiece 

From a photograph by Alfred A. Ordway. 

Map of Whittier-Land xii 

River Path, near Haverhill 5 

From a photograph by Ordway. 

Haverhill Academy 6 

From a photograph by G. W. W. Bartlett. 

Main Street, Haverhill 8 

From a photograph by Ordway. 

Birthplace in Winter 9 

From a photograph by Ordway. 

Kenoza Lake ^° 

From a photograph by Ordway. 

Fernside Brook, the Stepping-Stones . . . • n 

From a photograph by Ordway. 

The Birthplace, from the Road ^3 

From a photograph by Ordway. 

"The Haunted Bridge OF Country Brook" . . 15 

From a photograph by W. L. Bickum. 

Garden at Birthplace ^^ 

From a photograph by W. L. Bickum. 

Snow-Bound Kitchen, Eastern End .... 21 

From a photograph by Ordway. 

Snow-Bound Kitchen, Western End 23 

From a photograph by Ordway. 

The Whittier Elm "^ 

Joshua Coffin, Whittier's First Schoolmaster . . 31 
Scene of "In School Days" ....-• oT^ 

From a pencil sketch by W. L. Bickum. 

Harriet Livermore, "Half-welcome Guest" . . • 4^ 



X LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

Scene on Country Brook 43 

From a photograph by Ordway. 

The Sycamores 45 

From a photograph by Ordway. 

Old Garrison House (Peaslee House) .... 47 
Rocks Village and Bridge 48 

From a photograph by Ordway. 

River Valley, near Grave of Countess . . . 49 

From a photograph by Ordway. 

Dr. Elias Weld, the " Wise Old Physician " of Snow- 
bound, at the Age of Ninety 50 

Curson's Mill, Artichoke River 57 

From a photograph by Ordway. 

Deer Island and Chain Bridge, Home of Mrs. Spof- 

FORD 59 

The Whittier Home, Amesbury 61 

From a photograph by Mrs. P. A. Perry. 

Joseph Sturge, Whittier's English Benefactor . . 63 
"Garden Room," Amesbury Home 65 

From a photograph by C. W. Briggs. 

Mrs. Thomas, to whom " Memories " was addressed . 67 
Evelina Bray, at the Age of Seventeen ... 68 

From a miniature by J. S. Porter. 

Whittier, at the Age of Twenty-two. His earliest 

portrait 69 

From a miniature by J. S. Porter. 

Evelina Bray Downey, at the Age of Eighty . . 71 
Elizabeth Whittier Pickard 75 

From a portrait by Kittell. 

Scene in Garden, at Whittier's Funeral ... 76 
The Ferry, Salisbury Point, Mouth of Powow . . 77 

From a photograph by Miss Woodman. 

Powow River and Po Hill 79 

From a photograph by Miss Woodman. 

Friends' Meeting-House at Amesbury . . . .So 

From a photograph by Mrs. P. A. Perry. 

Interior of Friends' Meeting-House .... 81 

From a photograph by G. W. W. Bartlett. 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



XI 



Captain's Well g^ 

From a photograph by G. W. W. Bartlett. 

Whittier Lot, Union Cemetery, Amesbury . . 85 

From a photograph by W. R. Merryman. 

The Fountain on Mundy Hill 87 

Rocky Hill Church . . 88 

From a photograph by Miss Woodman. 

Interior of Rocky Hill Church 89 

From a photograph by Miss Woodman. 

Scene of " The Wreck of Rivermouth "... 90 
Scene of " The Tent on the Beach " . . . .91 
Hampton River Marshes, as seen from Whittier's 
Chamber 92 

From a photograph by Greenleaf Whittier Pickard. 

House of Miss Gove, Hampton Falls, Whittier on the 
Balcony 93 

From a photograph taken a few days before the poet's death, by Green- 
leaf Whittier Pickard. 

Chamber in which Whittier died 94 

Amesbury Public Library 95 

From a photograph by Gilman P. Smith. 

Whittier, at the Age of Forty-nine .... 97 

From a daguerreotype by Thomas E. Bouteile. 

The Wood Giant, at Sturtevant's, Centre Harbor 99 

The Cartland House, Newburyport loi 

Whitefield Church and Birthplace of Garrison . 103 

Bearcamp House, West Ossipee, N. H no 

Group o.f Friends at Sturtevant's, Centre Harbor, 

with Whittier 113 




MAP OF wiir 



KEY: — 

1. The Whittier Birthplace. 

2. Joshua Coffin's School, in house now occupied by 

Thomas Guild. Scene of poem " To My Old 
Schoolmaster." 

3. Site of District School. Scene of " In School n. Country Bridge. 



6. Cemetery referred to in " The Old Burying 
Ground." 

7. The Sycamores. 

8. Ramoth Hill. 

9. Hunting Hill. 
10. Grave of the Countess. 



Davs." 
4 Job's' Hill. 
5. East Haverhill Church. 



[2. Site of Thomas Whittier's Log House. 

13. Birchy Meadow, where Whittier taught school. 

14. Home of Sarah Greenleaf. 




^TIKR-LAND 



Home of Dr. Elias Weld and of the Countess, 

Rocks Village. 
"Old Garrison," the Pcaslee House. 
Rocks Bridge. 

Curson's Will, Artichoke River. 
Pleasant Valley. 
The Laurels. 

Site of " Goody" Martin's House. 
Whittier Burial Lot, Union Cemetery. 
Macy House. 



24. The Captain's Well. 

25. Friends' Meeting-House, Amesbury. 

26. Whittier Home, Amesbury. 

27. Hawksvvood. 

28. Deer Island, Chain Bridge, home of Mrs. Spofford. 

29. Rocky Hill Church. 

30. The Fountain, Mundy Hill. 

31. House at Hampton Falls, where Whittierdied. 

32. Scene of " The Wreck of Rivermouth.'' 

33. Boar's Head. 



HAVERHILL 



WHITTIER-LAND 



HAVERHILL 

The whole valley of the Merrimac, from its source among 
the New Hampshire hills to where it meets the ocean at 
Newburyport, has been celebrated in Whittier's verse, and 
might well be called " Whittier-Land." But the object of 
these pages is to describe only that part of the valley in- 
cluded in Essex County, the northeastern section of Mas- 
sachusetts. The border line separating New Hampshire 
from the Bay State is three miles north of the river, and 
follows all its turnings in this part of its course. For this 
reason each town on the north of the Merrimac is but 
three miles in width. It was on this three-mile strip that 
Whittier made his home for his whole life. His birthplace 
in Haverhill was his home for the first twenty-nine years 
of his life. He lived in Amesbury the remaining fifty-six 
years) The birthplace is in the East Parish of Haverhill, 
three miles from the City Hall, and three miles from what 
was formerly the Amesbury line. It is nearly midway 
between the New Hampshire line and the Merrimac 
River. In 1876 the township of Merrimac was formed 
out of the western part of Amesbury, and this new town is 
interposed between the two homes, which are nine miles 
apart. 

Haverhill, Merrimac, Amesbury, and Salisbury are each 
on the three-mile-wide ribbon of land stretching to the 
sea, on the left bank of the river. On the opposite bank 
are Bradford, Groveland, Newbury, and Newburyport. 



4 WHITTIER-LAND 

The whole region on both sides of the river abounds in 
beautifully rounded hills formed of glacial deposits of 
clay and gravel, and they are fertile to their tops. At 
many points they press close to the river, which has worn 
its channel down to the sea-level, and feels the influence 
of the tides beyond Haverhill. This gives picturesque 
effects at many points. The highest of the hills have 
summits about three hundred and sixty feet above the 
surface of the river, and there are many little lakes and 
ponds nestling in the hollows in every direction. In the 
early days these hills were crowned with lordly growths of 
oak and pine, and some of them still retain these adorn- 
ments. But most of the summits are now open pastures 
or cultivated fields. The roofs and spires of prosperous 
cities and villages are seen here and there among their 
shade trees, and give a human interest to the lovely land- 
scape. It is not surprising that Whittier found inspiration 
for the beautiful descriptive passages which occur in every 
poem which has this river for theme or illustration : — 

*' Stream of my fathers ! sweetly still 
The sunset rays thy valley fill ; 
Poured slantwise down the long defile, 
Wave, wood, and spire beneath them smile." 

Here is a description of the scenery of the INIerrimac 
Valley by Mr. Whittier himself, in a review of Rev. P. S. 
Boyd's " Up and Down the Merrimac," written for a jour- 
nal with which I was connected, and never reprinted until 
now : — 

" The scenery of the lower valley of the Merrimac is 
not bold nor remarkably picturesque, but there is a great 
charm in the panorama of its soft green intervales : its 
white steeples rising over thick clusters of elms and 
maples, its neat villages on the slopes of gracefully rounded 
hills, dark belts of woodland, and blossoming or fruited 
orchards, which would almost justify the words of one who 



HAVERHILL 5 

formerly sojourned on its banks, that the Merrimac is the 
fairest river this side of Paradise. Thoreau has immor- 
talized it in his ' Week on the Concord and Merrimack 
Rivers.' The late Caleb Cushing, who was not by nature 
inclined to sentiment and enthusiasm, used to grow elo- 
quent and poetical when he spoke of his native river. 




RIVER PATH 



Brissot, the leader of the Girondists in the French Revolu- 
tion, and Louis Philippe, who were familiar with its scen- 
ery, remembered it with pleasure. Anne Bradstreet, the 
wife of Governor Bradstreet, one of the earliest writers of 
verse in New England, sang of it at her home on its banks 
at Andover ; and the lovely mistress of Deer Island, who 
sees on one hand the rising moon lean above the low sea 



6 WHITTIER-LAND 

horizon of the east, and on the other the sunset reddening 
the track of the winding river, has made it the theme and 
scene of her prose and verse." 

The visitor who approaches Whittier-Land by the way 
of (Haverhill) will find in that city many places of interest 
in connection with the poet's early life, and referred to 
in his poems. JL'he Academy for which he wrote the ode 




I 



HAVERHILL ACADEMY 



sung at its dedication in 1827, when he was a lad of nine- 
teen, and before he had other than district school training) 
is now the manual training school of the city, and may be 
found, little changed except by accretion, on Winter Street, 
near the city hall. As this ode does not appear in any of 
his collected works, and is certainly creditable as a juve- 
nile production, it is given here. It was sung to the air 
of "Pillar of Glory:" — 



HAVERHILL 7 

Hail, Star of Science ! Come forth in thy splendor, 

Illumine these walls — let them evermore be 
A shrine where thy votaries offerings may tender, 
Hallowed by genins, and sacred to thee. 

Warmed by thy genial glow. 

Here let thy laurels grow 
Greenly for those who rejoice at thy name. 

Here let thy spirit rest, 

Thrilling the ardent breast, 
Rousing the soul with thy promise of fame. 

Companion of Freedom ! The light of her story, 

Wherever her voice at thine altar is known 
There shall no cloud of oppression come o'er thee, 
No envious tyrant thy splendor disown. 
Sons of the proud and free 
Joyous shall cherish thee, 
Long as their banners in triumph shall wave ; 
And from its peerless height 
Ne'er shall thy orb of hght 
Sink, but to set upon Liberty's grave. 

Smile then upon us ; on hearts that have never 

Bowed down 'neath oppression's unhallowed control. 
Spirit of Science ! O, crown our endeavor ; 
Here shed thy beams on the night of the soul ; 

Then shall thy sons entwine, 

Here for thy sacred shrine, 
Wreaths that shall flourish through ages to come, 

Bright in thy temple seen, 

Robed in immortal green, 
Fadeless memorials of genius shall bloom. 

Haverhill, although but three miles wide, is ten miles 
long, and includes many a fertile farm out of sight of 
city spires, and out of sound of city streets. As Whittier 
says in the poem " Haverhill : " — 

•' And far and wide it stretches still. 
Along its southward sloping hill, 
And overlooks on either hand 
A rich and many-watered land. 



8 WHITTIER-LAND 

And Nature holds with narrowmg space, 
From mart and crowd, her old-time grace, 
And guards with fondly jealous arms 
The wild growths of outlying farms. 

Her sunsets on Kenoza fall, 
Her autumn leaves by Saltonstall 
No lavished gold can richer make 
Her opulence of hill and lake." 

This " opulence of hill and lake " is the especial charm 
of Haverhill. The two symmetrical hills, named Gold and 







M \1X STKIlVr, H.W I.KIII 1,1, 
City Hall at the right; Haverhill l>ndge in middle distance 



Silver, near the river, one above and one below the city 
proper, are those referred to in "The Sycamores" as 
viewed by Washington with admiring comment, standing 
in his stirrups and 

" Looking up and looking down 
On the hills of Gold and Silver 
Rimming round the little town." 



lO 



WHITTIER-LAND 



Silver Hill is the one with the tower on it. As one takes 
at the railway station the electric car for the three-mile 
trip to the Whittier birthplace, two lakes are soon passed 
on the right. The larger one, overlooked by the stone 
castle on top of a great hill embowered in trees, is Ke- 
noza — a name signifying pickerel. It was christened by 
Whittier with the poem which has permanently fixed its 




KENOZA 



name. The whole lake and the beautiful wooded hills sur- 
rounding it, with the picturesque castle crowning one of 
them, are now included in a public park of which any city 
might be proud. Our car passes close at hand, on the left, 
another lake not visible because it is so much above 
us. This is a singular freak of nature — a deep lake fed 
by springs on top of a hill. The surface of this lake is 
far above the tops of most of the houses of Haverhill, 
and it is but a few rods from Kenoza, which lies almost 
a hundred feet below. Our road is at middle height be- 
tween the two, and only a stone's throw from either. 




FERNSIDE BROOK. THE STEPPING-STONES 



12 WHITTIER-LAND 

As we approach the birthplace, it is over the northern 
shoulder of Job's Hill, the summit of which is high above 
us at the right. This hill was named for an Indian chief 
of the olden time. We look down at the left into an idyl- 
lic valley, and through the trees that skirt a lovely brook 
catch sight of the ancient farmhouse on a gentle slope 
which seems designed by nature for its reception. To 
the west and south high hills crowd closely upon this 
valley, but to the east are green meadows through which 
winds, at last at leisure, the brook just released from its 
tumble among the rocks of old Job's left shoulder. The 
road by which we have come is comparatively new, and 
was not in existence when the Whittiers lived here. The 
old road crosses it close by the brook, which is here 
bridged. The house faces the brook, and not the road, 
presenting to the highway the little eastern porch that 
gives entrance to the kitchen, — the famous kitchen of 
" Snow-Bound;) 

The barn is'^across the road directly opposite this porch. 
It is now much longer than it was in Whittier's youth, but 
two thirds of it towards the road is the old part to which 
the boys tunneled through the snowdrift — 

..." With merry din, 
And roused the prisoned brutes within. 
The old horse thrust his long head out, 
And grave with wonder gazed about ; 
The cock his lusty greeting ^aid, 
And forth his speckled harem led 
The oxen lashed their tails, and hooked, 
And mild reproach of hunger looked ; 
The horned patriarch of the sheep. 
Like Egypt's Amun roused from sleep, 
Shook his sage head with gesture mute. 
And emphasized with stamp of foot." 

This is not the original barn of the pioneers, but was 
built by Whittier's father and uncle Moses in 1821. The 
ancient barn was not torn down till some years later. It 
was in what is now the orchard back of the house. There 



14 WHITTIER-LAND 

used to be, close to the cattle-yard of the comparatively 
new barn, a shop containing a blacksmith's outfit. This 
was removed more than fifty years ago, being in a ruin- 
ous condition from extreme old age. It had not been so 
tenderly cared for as was its contemporary of the Stuart 
times across the road. 

^homas Whittier, the pioneer, did not happen upon 
this valley upon his first arrival from England, in 1638^ 
Indeed, at that time the settlements had not reached into 
this then primeval wilderness. He settled first in that 
part of Salisbury which is now named Amesbury, and 
while a very young man represented that town in the 
General Court.', The Whittier Hill which overlooks the 
poet's Amesbury home was named for the pioneer, and 
not for his great-great-grandson. It is to this day called 
by Amesbury people Whitcher Hill — as that appears to 
have been the pronunciation of the name in the olden 
time. For some reason he removed across the river to 
Newbury. As a town official of Salisbury, he had occa- 
sion to lay out a highway towards Haverhill — a road still 
in use. He came upon a location that pleased his fancy, 
and in 1647, ^^ ^^^ ^g^ ^^ twenty-seven, he returned to 
the northern side of the river and built a log house on the 
left bank of Country Brook, about a mile from the loca- 
tion he selected in 1688 for his permanent residence. He 
lived forty-one years in this log house, and here raised a 
family of ten children, five of them stalwart boys, each 
over six feet in height. He was sixty-eight years old when 
he undertook to build the house now the shrine visited 
yearly by thousands. In raising its massive oaken frame 
he needed little help outside his own family. As to the 
location of the log house, the writer of these pages visited 
the spot with Mr. Whittier in search of it in 1882. He 
said that when a boy he used to see traces of its founda- 
tion, and hoped to find them again; but more than half a 
century had passed in the mean time, and our search was 
unsuccessful. It was on the ridge to the left of the road, 
quite near the old Country Bridge. 



HAVERHILL 15 

Country Bridge had the reputation of being haunted, 
when Whittier was a boy, and several of his early un- 
collected poems refer to this fact. No one who could 
avoid it ventured over it after dark. He told me that 
once he determined to swallow his fears and brave the 
danger. He approached whistling to keep his courage 




THE HAUNTED BRIDGE OF COUNTRY BROOK 

up, but a panic seized him, and he turned and ran home 
without daring to look behind. It was in this vicinity 
that Thomas Whittier built his first house in Haverhill. 
Further down the stream was Millvale, where were three 
mills, one a gristmill. This mill and the evil reputation 
of the bridge are both referred to in these Imes from 
"The Home-Coming of the Bride," a fragment first 
printed in " Life and Letters : " — 

" They passed the dam and the gray gristmill, 

Whose walls with the jar of grinding shook, 
And crossed, for the moment awed and still, 

The haunted bridge of the Country Brook." 



i6 WHITTIER-LAND 

It was the custom of the pioneers, when they had the 
choice, to select the sites of their homes near the small 
water powers of the brooks ; the large rivers they had 
not then the power to harness. There were good mill sites 
on Country Brook below the log house, but probably 
some other settler had secured them, and Thomas Whit- 
tier found in the smaller stream on his own estate a fairly 
good water power. Fern side Brook is a tributary of Coun- 
try Brook. Probably this decided the selection of the 
site for a house which was to be a home for generation 
after generation of his descendants. The dam recently 
restored is at the same spot where stood the Whittier mill, 
and in making repairs some of the timbers of the ancient 
mill were found. Parts of the original walls of the dam 
are now to be seen on each side of the brook, but the 
mill had disappeared long before Whittier was born. 
Further up the brook were two other dams, used as re- 
servoirs. The lower dam when perfect was high enough 
to enable the family to bring water to house and barn in 
pipes. 

When entering the grounds, notice the " bridle-post " 
at the left of the gate, and a massive boulder in which 
rude, steps are cut for mounting a horse led up to its 
side : — 

" The bridle-post an old man sat 
With loose-flung coat and high cocked hat." 

Like all of Whittier's descriptions, this is an exact pic- 
ture of what he had in mind ; for this stone, after a great 
snowstorm, would assume just this appearance. As to the 
phrase, " the w^ell-curb had a Chinese roof," I once asked 
him how this well could have had a roof, as the " long 
sweep high aloof" would have interfered with it. He 
stood by the side of the well, and explained that there 
was no roof, but that there was a shelf on one side of the 
curb on which to rest the bucket. The snow piled up on 
this like a Chinese roof. The isolation of the homestead 



HAVERHILL 17 

referred to in the phrase, " no social smoke curled over 
woods of snow-hung oak," has not been broken in either 
of the centuries this house has stood. No other house 
was ever to be seen from it in any direction. And yet 
neighbors are within a half-mile, only the hills and forests 
hide their habitations from view. When the wind is right, 
the bells of Haverhill may be faintly heard, and the roar 
of ocean after a storm sometimes penetrates as a hoarse 
murmur in this valley. 

In the old days, before these hills were robbed of the 
oaken growths that crowned their summits, their appar- 
ent height was much increased, and the isolation ren- 
dered even more complete than now. Sunset came much 
earlier than it did outside this valley. The eastern hill, 
beyond the meadow, is more distant and not so high, and 
so the sunrises are comparatively early. Visitors inter- 
ested in geology will find this hill an unusually good 
specimen of an eschar, a long ridge of glacial gravel set 
down in a meadow through which Fernside Brook curves 
on its way to its outlet in Country Brook. Job's Hill at 
the south rises so steeply from the right bank of Fernside 
Brook, at the foot of the terraced slope in front of the 
house, that it is difficult for many rods to get a foothold. 
The path by which the hill was scaled and the stepping- 
stones by which the brook was crossed are accurately 
sketched in the poem "Telling the Bees," — a poem, by 
the way, which originally had " Fernside" for its title : — 

" Here is the place; right over the hill 
Runs the path I took ; 
You can see the gap in the old wall still, 

And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook." 

Visitors should read the stanzas immediately following 
this, and note the exactness of the poet's description of 
the homestead he had in mind. The poem was written 
more than twenty years after he left Haverhill, and it 
was many years after that when Mr. Alfred Ordway, in 



i8 WHITTIER-LAND 

taking photographs of the place, noticed that it had al- 
ready been pictured in verse ; when he spoke of it to 
Mr. Whittier, the poet was both surprised and pleased at 
this, which, he said, was the first recognition of his birth- 
place. The public is indebted to Mr. Ordway for many 
other discoveries of the same kind, illustrating Whittier's 
minute fidelity to nature in his descriptions of scenery. 

Let us enter the house by the eastern porch, noting 
the circular door-stone, which was the millstone that 




GARDEN AT BIRTHPLACE 



ground the grain of the pioneers, more than a century 
before Whittier was born. It belonged in the mill on the 
brook to which reference has been made. The fire which 
destroyed the roof of the house in November, 1902, did 
not injure this porch, and there were other parts of the 
house which were scarcely scorched. These are the ori- 
ginal walls, and the handiwork of the pioneers is exactly 
copied in whatever had to be restored. This was made 
possible by photographs that had been kept, showing the 



HAVERHILL 19 

width and shape of every board and moulding, inside 
and outside the house. Here again it is Mr. Ordway, pre- 
sident of the board of trustees having the birthplace in 
charge, who is to be especially thanked. It is proper 
here, as I have spoken of the fire, to mention the heroic 
work of the custodian, Mrs. Ela, and others, who saved 
every article of the precious souvenirs endangered by the 
fire, so that nothing was lost. 

The kitchen, which occupies nearly the whole northern 
side of the house, is twenty-six feet long and sixteen 
wide. The visitor's attention is usually first drawn to the 
great fireplace in the centre of its southern side. The cen- 
tral chimney was built by the pioneer more than two cen- 
turies ago, and it has five fireplaces opening into it. The 
bricks of the kitchen hearth are much worn, as might be 
expected from having served so many generations as the 
centre of their home life. It was around this identical 
hearth that the family was grouped, as sketched in the 
great poem which has consecrated this room, and made 
it a shrine toward which the pilgrims of many future gen- 
erations will find their way. Here was piled — 

" The oaken log, green, huge and thick. 
And on its top the stout back-stick ; 
The knotty forestick laid apart, 
And filled between with curious art 
The ragged brush ; then, hovering near, 
We watched the first red blaze appear, 
Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam 
On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, 
Until the old, rude-furnished room 
Burst, flower-like, into rosy bloom." 

Here on these very bricks simmered the mug of cider and 
the "apples sputtered in a row," while through these 
northern w^indows the homely scene was repeated on the 
sparkling drifts in mimic flame. The table now standing 
between these windows is the same that then stood there, 
and many of the dishes on the shelves near by are the 



20 WHITTIER-LAND 

family heirlooms occupying their old places. Two of these 
pieces of china were brought here by Sarah Greenleaf, 
Whittier's grandmother. The bull's-eye watch over the 
mantel is a fine specimen of the olden time, and hangs 
on the identical nail from which uncle Moses nightly sus- 
pended his plump timepiece. 

But perhaps the article which is most worthy of atten- 
tion in this room is the desk at the eastern corner. This 
was the desk of Joseph Whittier, great-grandfather of the 
poet, and son of the pioneer. On the backs and bottoms 
of the drawers of this desk are farm memoranda made 
with chalk much more than a century ago. One item 
dated in 1798 records that the poet's father made his 
last excursion to Canada in that year. It was about a 
century old when the boy Whittier scribbled his first 
rhymes upon it. By an interesting coincidence he also, 
in his eighty-fifth year, wrote his very last poem upon it. 
When the family removed to Amesbury, in 1836, this 
desk was taken with them, but soon after was replaced 
by a new one, and this went "out of commission." The 
new desk was the one on which " Snow-Bound " was writ- 
ten, and this may now be seen at Amesbury. When Mr. 
Whittier's niece was married, he gave her this old desk, 
which she took to Portland, where it was thoroughly re- 
paired. When he visited Portland, he wrote many letters 
and some poems on it. In the summer of 189 1, as her 
uncle proposed to make his home with his cousins, the 
Cartlands, in Newburyport, his niece had this ancient 
desk sent there. Mr. Whittier was greatly pleased, upon 
his arrival, to find in his room the heirloom which was 
hallowed by so many associations connected not only 
with his ancestry, but with his ow^n early life. Nearly all 
of the literary work of his last year was done upon this 
desk. To his niece he wrote : — 

" I am writing at the old desk, which Gertrude has 
placed in my room, but it seems difficult to imagine my- 
self the boy who used to sit by it and make rhymes. It 



22 WHITTIER-LAND 

is wonderfully rejuvenated, and is a handsome piece of 
furniture. It was the desk of my great-grandfather, and 
seemed to me a wretched old wreck when thee took it to 
Portland. I did not suppose it could be made either use- 
ful or ornamental. I wrote my first pamphlet on slavery, 
* Justice and Expediency,' upon it, as well as a great 
many rhymes which might as well have never been writ- 
ten. I am glad that it has got a new lease of life." 

The little room at the w^estern end of the kitchen was 
" mother's room," its floor two steps higher than that of 
the larger room, for a singular reason. In digging the 
cellar the pioneer found here a large boulder it was in- 
convenient to remove, and wishing a milk room at this 
corner, he was obliged to make its floor two steps higher 
than the rest of the cellar. This inequality is reproduced 
in each story. In this little room the bed is furnished 
with the blankets and linen woven by Whittier's mother 
on the loom that used to stand in the open chamber. Her 
initials " A. H. " on some of the pieces show that they 
date back to her life in Somersworth, N. H. On the wall 
of this room may be seen the baby-clothes of Whittier's 
father, made by the grandmother who brought the name 
of Greenleaf into the family. The bureau in this room is 
the one that stood there in the olden time. The little 
mirror that stands on it is the one by which Whittier 
shaved most of his life. He used it at Amesbury, and 
possibly his father used it before him at Haverhill. 

Mr. Whittier had a great fund of stories of the super- 
natural that were current in this neighborhood in his 
youth, and one that had this very kitchen for its scene, 
he told with much impressiveness. It was the story of his 
aunt Mercy — 

" The sweetest woman ever Fate 
Perverse denied a household mate." 

It was out of this window in the kitchen that she saw the 
horse and its rider coming down the road, and recognized 



HAVERHILL 23 

the young man to whom she was betrothed. It was out of 
this window in the porch that she saw them again, as she 
went to the door to welcome her lover. It was this door 
she opened, to find no trace of horse or rider. It was to 
this little room at the other end of the kitchen that she 




Copjriglit 1891, by A. A. Ordway 

WESTERN END OF KITCHEN 

View of "mother's room; " the poet was born in a room at the left, beyond 

the fireplace 

went, bewildered and terrified, to waken her sister, who 
tried' in vain to pacify her by saying she had been dream- 
ing by the fire, when she should have been in bed. And it 
was in this room she received the letter many days later 
telling her of the death of her lover in a distant city at 
the hour of her vision.^ Mr. Whittier told such stories with 
the air of more than half belief in their truth, especially 
in his later years, when he became interested in the re- 
searches of scientists in the realm of telepathy. He said 
his aunt was the most truthful of women, and she never 
doubted the reality of her vision. 

The door at the southwestern corner of the kitchen 
1 This story is told more fully in Life and Letters, pp. 53' 54- 



24 WHITTIER-LAND 

opens into the room in which the poet was born. This 
was the parlor, but as the Friends were much given to 
hospitality, it was often needed as a bedroom, and there 
was in it a bedstead that could be lifted from the floor 
and supported by a hook in the ceiling when not in use. 
In the corners are cabinets containing articles of use and 
ornament that are genuine relics of the Whittier family. 
The inlaid mahogany card-table between the front win- 
dow's was brought to this house just a century ago (1804) 
by Abigail Hussey, the bride of John Whittier, and placed 
where it now stands. Like the desk in the kitchen, it has 
always been in the possession of the family, and was re- 
stored to the birthplace by the niece to whom Whittier 
gave it. In this room are several books that belonged in 
the small library of Whittier's father, which are mentioned 
in " Snow-Bound," and described more fully in the rhymed 
catalogue, a part of which appears in " Life and Letters," 
p. 46. I here give the full list copied from Whittier's man- 
uscript, for which I am indebted to Miss Sarah S. Thayer, 
daughter of Abijah W. Thayer, who edited the " Haverhill 
Gazette," and with whom Whittier boarded while in the 
Academy. Mr. Thayer had appended to the manuscript 
these words : " This was deposited in my hands about 
1828, by John G. Whittier, wlio assured me that it was 
his first effort at versification. It was written in 1823 or 
1824, when Whittier was fifteen or sixteen years old." 

NARRATIVES 

How Captain Riley and his crew 
Were on Sahara's desert threw. 
How Rolhns to obtain the cash 
Wrote a dull history of trash. 
O'er Bruce's travels I have pored, 
Who the sources of the Nile explored. 
Malcolm of Salem's narrative beside, 
Who lost his ship's crew, unless belied. 
How David Foss, poor man, was thrown 
Upon an island all alone. 



HAVERHILL 25 

RELIGIOUS 

The Bible towering o'er the rest, 

Of all the other books the best. 

Old Father Baxter's pious call 

To the unconverted all. 

William Perm's laborious writing, 

And the books 'gainst Christians fighting. 

Some books of sound theology, 

Robert Barclay's " Apology." 

Dyer's " Religion of the Shakers," 

Clarkson's also of the Quakers. 

Many more books I have read through — 

Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress " too. 

A book concerning John's baptism, 

Elias Smith's " Universalism." 



JOURNALS, LIVES, &c. 

The Lives of Franklin and of Penn, 

Of Fox and Scott, all worthy men. 

The Lives of Pope, of Young and Prior, 

Of Milton, Addison, and Dyer ; 

Of Doddridge, Fenelon and Gray, 

Armstrong, Akenside, and Gay. 

The Life of Burroughs, too, I 've read. 

As big a rogue as e'er was made ; 

And Tufts, who, I will be civil. 

Was worse than an incarnate devil. 

— Written by John G. Whittier. 

The books of this library now to be seen are the " Life 
of George Fox," in two leather-bound volumes, printed in 
London, 1709, Sewel's " Painful History," printed in 1825, 
Ellwood's " Drab-Skirted Muse," Philadelphia edition of 
1775, and Thomas Clarkson's "Portraiture of Quaker- 
ism," New York edition of 1806. 

The little red chest near the fireplace is an ancient relic 
of the family, formerly used for storing linen. The por- 
trait of Whittier over the fireplace is enlarged from a 
miniature painted by J. S. Porter about 1830, and it is 
the earliest likeness of the poet ever taken. The original 



26 WHITTIER-LAND 

miniature may be seen at the Amesburyhome. The large 
portrait on the opposite side of the room was painted 
by Joseph Lindon Smith, an artist of celebrity, who is a 
relative of Whittier's. Portraits of Whittier's brother, 
his sisters, his mother, and his old schoolmaster, Joshua 
Coffin, are shown in this room. The silhouette on the 
mantelpiece is of aunt Mercy, his mother's unmarried 
sister. A sampler worked by Lydia Ayer, the girl com- 
memorated in the poem " In School Days," is exhibited 
in this room. She was a member of the family who were 
the nearest neighbors of the Whittiers — a family still 
represented in their ancient homestead, where her grand- 
niece now lives. She died at the age of fourteen. 

It was the privilege of the writer to accompany Mr. 
Whittier when he made his last visit to his birthplace, in 
late October, 1882. When in this birth-room, he expressed 
a wish to see again a fire upon its hearth, not for warmth, 
for it was a warm day, but for the sentiment of it. The 
elderly woman who had charge of the house said she 
would have a fire built, and in the mean time we went 
down to the brook, intending to cross by the stepping- 
stones he had so often used. But the brook was running 
full, the stepping-stones were slippery, and Mr. Whittier 
reluctantly gave up crossing. Then we visited the little 
burying-ground of the family, where lie the remains of his 
ancestors. When we returned to the parlor, we found 
the good woman had brought down a sheet-iron air-tight 
stove from the attic, set it in the fireplace, and there was 
a crackling fire in it ! I suggested that we could easily 
remove the stove and have a blaze on the hearth, but 
Mr. Whittier at once negatived the proposition, saying 
we must not let the woman know we were disappointed. 
She had taken much pains to please us, and must not be 
made aware of her mistake. He was always ready to 
suffer inconvenience rather than wound the sensibilities 
of any one. 

From the back entry at the western end of the kitchen 



HAVERHILL 27 

ascends the steep staircase down which Whittier, when an 
infant, was rolled by his sister Mary, two years older than 
he. She thought if he were well wrapped in a blanket he 
would not be harmed, and the experiment proved quite 
successful, thanks to her abundant care in bundling him 
in many folds. He happily escaped one other peril in his 
infancy. His parents took him with them on a winter 
drive to Kingston, N. H. To protect him from the cold, 
he was wrapped too closely in his blankets, and he came 
so near asphyxiation that for a time he was thought to be 
dead. He was taken into a farmhouse they were passing 
when the discovery was made, and after a long and anx- 
ious treatment they were delighted to find he was living. 
The rooms in the upper part of the house injured by 
the recent fire have been perfectly restored to their ori- 
ginal condition. At Whittier's last visit here he went into 
every room, and told stories of the happenings of his youth 
in each. At the head of the back stairs is a little doorless 
press, which he pointed out as a favorite play-place of 
his and his brother's. Here they found room for their 
few toys, as perhaps three generations of Whittier chil- 
dren had done before them. And it is not unlikely that 
some of their toys had amused the youth of their grand- 
father. One of his earliest memories is connected with 
this little closet, for here he had his first severe twinge of 
conscience. He had told a lie — no doubt a white one, 
for it did not trouble him at first — and soon after was 
watching the rising of a thunder-cloud that was grumbling 
over the great trees on the western hill near at hand. A 
bolt descended among the oaks, and the deafening explo- 
sion was instantaneous. He saw in it an exhibition of 
divine wrath over his sin, and obeyed the primal instinct 
to hide himself. His mother, searching for him some time 
after the storm had passed, found her repentant little 
boy almost smothered under a quilt in this closet, and as 
he confessed his sin, he was tenderly shrived. Here in 
the open chamber the brothers often slept when visitors 



28 WHITTIER-LAND 

claimed the little western chamber they usually occupied. 
They would sometimes find, sifted through cracks in the 
old walls, a little snowdrift on their quilt. The small 
western room the boys called theirs was the scene of the 
story Trowbridge has so neatly versified. The elder pro- 
posed that as they could lift each other, by lifting in turn 
they could rise to the ceiling, and there was no knowing 
how much further if they were out of doors ! The pru- 
dent lads, to make it easy in case of failure, stood upon 
the bed in this little room. Trowbridge says : — 

" Kind Nature smiled on tliat wise child, 

Nor could her love deny him 
The large fulfilment of his plan ; 
Since he who lifts his brother man 

In turn is lifted by him." 

Boys were boys in those days, and Whittier told us of try- 
ing to annoy his younger sister by pretending to hang 
her cat on this railing to the attic stairs. And girls were 
girls too ; for he told of Elizabeth's frightening two hired 
men who were occupying the open chamber. They had 
been telling each other ghost stories after they went to 
bed ; but both asserted that they could not be frightened 
by such things. From over the door of her room Eliza- 
beth began throwing pins, one at a time, so that they 
would strike on the floor near the brave men. They were 
so frightened they would not stay there another night. In 
the open attic bunches of dried herbs hung from the raft- 
ers, and traces of corn selected for seed. On the floor the 
boys spread their store of nuts " from brown October's 
wood." Originally the northern side of the roof sloped 
down to the first story, as was the fashion in the days of 
the Stuarts. But some years before Whittier's birth this 
side of the roof was raised, giving much additional cham- 
ber room. 

Not far from the house, at the foot of the western hill, 
is the small lot inclosed by a stone wall, to which refer- 



HAVERHILL 



29 



ence has been made, that from the earhest settlement was 
the burying-place of the family. Here lie the remains of 
Thomas Whittier and those of his descendants who were 
the ancestors of the poet. A plain granite shaft in the 
centre of the lot is inscribed with the names of Thomas 
Whittier and of Ruth Green, his wife ; Joseph Whittier 
and Mary Peaslee, his wife ; Joseph Whittier, 2d, and 




THE WHITTIER ELAI 



Sarah Greenleaf, his wife. No headstones mark the sev- 
eral graves. Others of the family were buried here, in- 
cluding Mary Whittier, an aunt of the poet. His father 
and uncle Moses, originally buried here, were removed to 
the Amesbury cemetery, when his mother died, in 1857. 

Across the road from the house of the nearest neigh- 
bors, the Ayers, in a field of the Whittier farm, is an old, 
immense, and symmetrical tree, labeled " The Whittier 



30 WHITTIER-LAND 

Elm," which the poet's schoolmate, Edmund Ayer, saved 
from the woodman's axe by paying an annual tribute, at a 
time when the farm had gone out of the possession of the 
Whittiers, and while the new proprietors were intent upon 
despoiling the place of its finest trees. This is the tree 
referred to in these lines, written in 1862, in the album 
of Lydia Amanda Ayer (now Mrs. Evans), his schoolmate 
Lydia's niece : — 

" A dweller where my infant eyes 
Looked out on Nature's sweet surprise, 
Whose home is in the ample shade 
Of the old Elm Tree where I played, 
Asks for her book a word of mine : — 
I give it in a single line : 
Be true to Nature and to Heaven's design ! " 

Whittier took us that October day to neighbor Ayer's 
house, where the brother of little Lydia was still living, 
who also was a schoolmate of the poet, and they talked 
of the old times with the greatest relish. The Ayer house 
occupies the site of a garrison house, built of strong oaken 
timbers, and used as a house of refuge in the time of the 
Indian wars. The Whittiers, though close at hand, never 
availed themselves of its protection, even when Indian 
faces covered with war-paint peered through the kitchen 
windows upon the peaceful Quaker family. We were soon 
joined by another aged schoolmate, Aaron Chase, and 
with him we went to Corliss Hill, where Whittier showed 
us the two houses in which he first went to school. They 
are both now standing, and are dwelling-houses in each 
of which a room was given up for the district school — 
one before the house described in " In School Days " was 
built, and the other while it was being repaired. He had 
not yet arrived at school age when his sister Mary took 
him to his first school, kept by his life-long friend, Joshua 
Cofiin, to whom he addressed the poem, " To My Old 
Schoolmaster." As I happened to be a nephew of Coffin, 
he told me stories of his first school. It was kept in an 



HAVERHILL 31 

unfinished ell of a farmhouse ; but the room had been 
transformed into a neatly furnished kitchen when we vis- 
ited it. In the poem referred to he alludes to the quarrels 




JOSHUA COFFIN 

" Olden teacher, present friend, 
Wise with antiquarian search, 
In the scrolls of State and Church ; 
Named on history's title-page. 
Parish-clerk and justice sage." 

To My Old Schoolmaster 



of the good man and his tipsy wife heard through " the 
cracked and crazy wall." He told this story of the tipsy 
wife : She sent her son for brush to heat her oven. He 
brought such a nice load that she thought it too bad to 
waste it in the oven. So she sent her son with it to the 



32 WHITTIER-LAND 

grocery, and he brought back the liquor he received in 
payment. But this made her short of oven wood, and to 
eke out her supply of fuel she burned a loose board of the 
cellar stairs. The next time she had occasion to go to 
the cellar, she forgot the hiatus she had made and broke 
her leg. After Mr. Chase left us, Whittier told me that his 
old schoolmate was a nephew of the last person usually 
accounted a witch in this neighborhood. She was the wife 
of Moses Chase of Rocks Village. Her relatives believed 
her a witch, and one of her nieces knocked her down in 
the shape of a persistent bug that troubled her. At that 
moment it happened that the old woman fell and hurt her 
head. The old lady on one occasion went before Squire 
Ladd, the blacksmith and Justice of the Peace at the 
Rocks, and took her oath that she was not a witch. 

We next visited the scene of " In School Days," and 
found some traces of the schoolhouse that have since 
been obliterated, although a tablet now marks its site. 
The door-stone over which the scholars " went storming 
out to playing " was still there, and some of the founda- 
tion stones were in place. " Around it still the sumachs " 
were growing, and blackberry vines were creeping. Mr. 
Whittier gathered a handful of the red sumach, and took 
it to Amesbury with him. It remained many days in a 
vase in his "garden room." Speaking of his boyhood, he 
said he was always glad when it came his turn to stay at 
home on First Day. The chaise, driven to Amesbury — 
nine miles — every First and Fifth Day, fortunately was 
not of a capacity to take the whole family at once. This 
gave him an occasional opportunity, much enjoyed, to 
spend the day musing by the brook, or in the shade of 
the oaks and hemlocks on the breezy hilltops, which com- 
manded a view unsurpassed for beauty. These hills, which 
so closely encompass the ancient homestead at the west 
and south, are among the highest in the county. From 
them one gets glimpses of the ocean in Ipswich Bay, the 
undulating hills of Newbury, cultivated to their tops, on the 



HAVERHILL 



33 



further side of the Merrimac, the southern ranges of the 
New Hampshire mountains, and the heights of Wachusett 
and Monadnock in Massachusetts. Po Hill, in Amesbury, 
under which stands the Quaker meeting-house where 
his parents worshiped, shows its great round dome in 
the east. He never tired of these views, and celebrated 




SCENE OF "IN SCHOOL DAYS" 



them in many of his poems. He especially dreaded the 
winter drives to meeting. Buffalo robes were not so plenty 
in those days as they became a few years later, and our 
fathers did not dress so warmly as do we. He was so 
stiffened by cold on some of these drives to Amesbury 
that he told me " his teeth could not chatter until thawed 
out." Winter had its compensations, as he has so well 
shown in " Snow-Bound." But it is noticeable that he does 
not refer in that poem to the winter drives to meeting. 



34 WHITTIER-LAND 

On one occasion he improved the absence of his parents 
on a First Day to go nutting. He climbed a tall walnut, 
and had a fall of about twenty feet which came near being 
fatal. The Friends did not theoretically hold one day 
more sacred than another, and yet theirs was the habit of 
the Puritan community, to abstain from all play as well 
as from work on the Sabbath, and this fall gave a smart 
fillip to the young poet's conscience. 

This story illustrating Whittier's popularity when a 
child I did not get from him, but is a legend of the neigh- 
borhood. One of their nearest neighbors, a Miss Chase, 
had a cherry-tree she guarded with the utmost jealousy. 
No bird could alight on it in cherry time, and no boy ap- 
proach it, without bringing her to the rescue with a prompt- 
ness that frightened them. One day she saw a boy in the 
branches of this precious tree, and issued upon the scene 
with dire threats. She caught sight of the culprit's face, 
and instantly changed her tone : " Oh, is it you, Green- 
leaf ? Take all the cherries you want ! " 

The old homestead was an object of interest as far 
back as 1842, as is shown by a letter before me, written 
by Elizabeth Nicholson of Philadelphia, who asks her 
friend, Elizabeth Whittier, for a picture of it : " When 
thee come to Philadelphia if thee will bring ever so rough 
a sketch of the house where Greenleaf was born, for 
Elizabeth Lloyd to copy for my book, why — we '11 be 
glad to see thee ! I hope for the sake of the picturesque 
it is a ruin — indeed it must be, for Griswold says it has 
been in the family a hundred years ! " It had then been 
in the family for over one hundred and fifty years. The 
book referred to by Miss Nicholson was a manuscript 
collection of all the verses, published and unpublished, 
that Whittier had written at that time — a notable collec- 
tion, now in existence. She had obtained from the poet a 
preface in verse for this album, which as it has autobio- 
graphical material, refers to the scenery of his birthplace, 
and was never in print, is here given in a version he pre- 



HAVERHILL 35 

pared for another similar album. For this version I am 
indebted to the collection made by Mary Pillsbiiry of 
Newbury, which contains other original poems of Whit- 
tier never published : — 

A RETROSPECT 

O visions of my boyhood ! shades of rhymes ! 

Vain dreams and longings of my early times ! 

The work of intervals, a ploughboy's lore, 

Oft conned by hearthlight when day's toil was o'er ; 

Or when through roof-cracks could at night behold 

Bright stars in circle with pattens of gold ; 

Or stretched at noon while oaken branches cast 

A restful shade, where rippling waters passed ; 

The ox unconscious panted at my side, 

The good dog fondly his young master eyed, 

And on the boughs above the forest bird 

Alone rude snatches of the measure heard; 

The measure that had sounded to me long, 

And vain I sought to weave it in a song, 

Or trace it, when the world's enchantment first 

To longing eye, as kindling dawn's light, burst. 

Then flattery's voice, in woman's gentlest tone, 

Woke thoughts and feelings heretofore unknown, 

And homes of wealth and beauty, wit and mirth. 

By taste refined, by eloquence and worth, 

Taught and diffused the intellect's high joy, 

And gladly welcomed e'en a rustic boy ; 

Or when ambition's lip of flame and fear 

Burned like the tempter's to my listening ear, 

And a proud spirit, hidden deep and long. 

Rose up for strife, stern, resolute, and strong, 

Eager for toil, and proudly looking up 

To higher levels for the world, with hope. 

In these lines Whittier has told in brief the whole story 
of his life, from his early dreaming by this brookside 
and at this hearthstone, to the waking of his political 
ambitions, and later to his earnest strife to bring up the 
world " to higher levels." 

It happened that the day on which Whittier visited his 



36 WHITTIER-LAND 

birthplace for the last time was toward the close of a 
spirited political campaign in which Whittier took much 
interest, as General ]>utler was a candidate he was oppos- 
ing. Speaking of Butler reminded him of the pet ox of 
his boyhood, which had the odd name of " Old Butler," 
between whose horns he would sit as the animal chewed 
his cud under the hillside oaks. This was the same ox 
that, in rushing down one of these steep hills for salt, 
could not stop because of his momentum, but saved his 
young master's life by leaping over his head. No doubt 
this ox was in mind when he wrote the line just quoted, 
"The ox unconscious panted at my side." One story 
reminded him of another, and he said this ox was named 
for another that had its day in a former generation on a 
neighboring farm. 

This is the story he told of the original "Old Butler: " 
A family named Morse lived not far from here, and in- 
cluded several boys fond of practical joking. The older 
brothers one day bound the youngest upon the back of 
the ox, Butler. Frightened by the unusual burden, the 
animal dashed away to the woods on Job's Hill. The 
lad was fearfully bruised before he was rescued. Indignant 
at the treatment he had received, he left home the next 
morning, and was not heard from until in his old age he 
returned to the Haverhill farm, and found his brothers 
still living. They killed for him the fatted calf, and after 
the supper, as they sat before the great wood fire, they 
talked over the events of their boyhood. One of the bro- 
thers referred to the subject all had hitherto avoided, and 
said, " Don't you remember your ride upon Old Butler.'*" 
" Yes, I do remember it," was the answer, " and I don't 
thank you for bringing it up at this time." The next 
morning he left the place, and was never again heard 
from. Mr. Whittier told this story to explain the odd 
name he had given his ox. 

The story has been often told of Garrison's coming out 
to East Haverhill to find a contributor who had interested 



HAVERHILL 37 

him ; and it has been stated that the Quaker lad was 
called in from work in the field to see the dapper young 
editor and his lady friend. He once told me that the 
situation was a bit more awkward for him. It happened 
that on this eventful morning the young poet had discov- 
ered that a hen had stolen her nest under the barn, and 
he was crawling on his hands and knees, digging his dusty 
way towards the hen, when his sister Mary came out to 
summon him to receive city visitors. It was only by her 
urgent persuasion that he was induced to give up burrow- 
ing for the eggs. By making a wide detour, he entered 
the house without being seen, and in haste effected a 
change of raiment. In telling the story, he said he put on 
in his haste a pair of trousers that came scarcely to his 
ankles, and he must have been a laughable spectacle. 
He would have felt much more at ease if he had come 
in just as he was when he emerged from under the barn. 
Garrison, with the social tact that ever distinguished him, 
put the shy boy at his ease at once. 

After the death of their father, Greenleaf and his bro- 
ther Franklin for a time worked the farm together, and 
when in later life they indulged in reminiscences of this 
agricultural experience, this is a story with which the poet 
liked to tease his brother : Franklin was sent to swap 
cows with a venerable Quaker living at considerable dis- 
tance from their homestead. He came back with a beau- 
tiful animal, warranted as he supposed to be a good cow, 
and he depended upon a verbal warrant from a member 
of a Society which was justly proud of its reliability in all 
business transactions. It was soon found that she was 
worthless as a milker, and Franklin took her back, de- 
manding a cancellation of the bargain because the cow 
was not as represented. But the old Quaker was ready 
for him : " What did I tell thee ? Did I say she was a 
good cow? No, I told thee she was a har?isome cow — and 
thee cannot deny she is harnsome ! " 

One of Whittier's ancestors was fined for cutting oaks 



38 WHITTIER-LAND 

on the common. When this fact was discovered, he was 
asked if he would wish this circumstance to be omitted in 
his biography. " By no means," he said, " tell the whole 
story. It shows we had some enterprising ancestors, even 
if^ bit unscrupulous." 

(^When Whittier last visited his birthplace, ten years 
before his death, he was saddened by many evidences he 
saw that the estate was not being thriftily managed, and 
expressed the wish to buy and restore the place to some- 
thing like its condition when it remained in his famil^. 
Not one of his near relatives was then so situated as 
to be able to take charge of it, and his idea of again 
making it a Whittier homestead was reluctantly given up. 
(when he learned, towards the close of his life, that Mr. 
Ordway, Mayor Burnham, and other public-spirited citi- 
zens of Haverhill, proposed to buy and care for the place, 
already become a shrine for many visitors, he asked 
permission to pay whatever might be needed for its pur- 
chase. He died before negotiations could be completed, 
and Hon. James H. Carleton generously bought the 
homestead, and transferred the proprietorship to a self- 
perpetuating board of nine trustees]) viz. : Alfred A. Ord- 
way, George C. How, Charles Butters, Dudley Porter, 
Thomas E. Burnham, Clarence E. Kelley, Susan B. San- 
ders, Sarah M. F. Duncan, and Annie W. Frankle. In 
the deed of gift the trustees were enjoined " to preserve 
as nearly as maybe the natural features of the landscape; 
preserve and restore the buildings thereon as nearly as 
may be in the same condition as when occupied by Whit- 
tier ; and to afford all persons, at such suitable times and 
under such proper restrictions as said trustees may pre- 
scribe, the right and privilege of access to the same, that 
thereby the memory and love for the poet and the man 
may be cherished and perpetuated." Mr. Ordway was 
made president of the board, and in his hands the office 
has been no sinecure. His unflagging zeal and his uner- 
ring good taste have resulted not only in putting the 



HAVERHILL 39 

ancient house into the perfect order of the olden time, but 
in fertiHzing the wornout fields, and preserving for future 
ages one of the finest specimens in the country of the 
colonial farmhouse of New England. Mr. Whittier's 
niece, to whom he left his house in Amesbury, returned 
to the birthplace many of the household treasures that 
were carried from there in 1836. The articles in the house 
purporting to be Whittier heirlooms may be depended on 
as genuine. 

I do not think that Whittier was ever aware that Harriet 
Livermore, the " not unfeared, half- welcome guest," of 
whom he gave such a vivid portrait in " Snow-Bound," 
returned to America from her travels in the Holy Land 
at about the time that poem was published, and died the 
next year, 1867. I have from good authority this curious 
story of her first reading of those lines which meant so 
much in a peculiar way to the immortality of her name. 
She was ill, and called with a prescription at a drugstore 
in Burlington, N. J. It happened that the druggist was a 
personal friend of Whittier's — Mr. Allinson, father of the 
lad for whom the poem " My Namesake " was written. 
This was in March, 1866, and Whittier had just sent his 
friend an early copy of his now famous poem. He had 
not had time to open the book when the prescription was 
handed him. As it would take considerable time to com- 
pound the medicine, he asked the aged lady to take a seat, 
and handed her the book he had just received to read 
while waiting. When he gave her the medicine and she 
returned the book, he noticed she was much perturbed, 
and was mystified by her exclamation : " This book tells 
a pack of lies about me ! " He naturally supposed she 
was crazy, both from her remark and from her appearance. 
It was not until some time later that he learned that his 
customer was Harriet Livermore herself ! 

In another New Jersey town was living at the same time 
another of the " Snow-Bound " characters, — the teacher 
of the district school, whose name even the poet had for- 



40 WHITTIER-LAND 

gotten when this sketch of him was written. In the last 
year of his life Whittier recalled that his name was Has- 
kell, but could tell me no more, except that he was from 
Maine, and was a Dartmouth student. His story is told 
in " Life and Letters," and is now referred to only to note 
the curious fact that although he lived until 1876, and 
was a cultivated man who no doubt was familiar with Whit- 
tier's work, yet he was never aware that he had the poet 
for a pupil.^ and died without knowing that his own portrait 
had been drawn by the East Haverhill lad with whom 
he had played in this old kitchen. I have this from my 
friend, John Townsend Trowbridge, who was personally 
acquainted with Haskell in the last years of his life. 

It was in 1698, ten years after this house was built, 
that the Indians in a foray upon Haverhill burned many 
houses and killed or captured forty persons, including 
the heroic Hannah Dustin, in whom they caught a veri- 
table tartar. Her statue with uplifted tomahawk stands 
in front of the City Hall. It is possible that on her re- 
turn to Haverhill she brought her ten Indian scalps into 
this kitchen. 

Whittier used to tell many amusing stories of his boy- 
hood days. Here is one he heard in the old kitchen of 
the Whittier homestead at Haverhill, as told by the aged 
pastor of the Congregational church in the neighborhood, 
who used to call upon the Quaker family as if they be- 
longed to his parish. These extra-official visits were much 
prized, especially by the boys, for he told them many a 
tale of his own boyhood in Revolutionary times. This 
story of " the power of figures " I can give almost in 
Whittier's words, as I made notes while he was telling it : 

The old clergyman sat by the kitchen fire with his mug 
of cider and told of his college life. He was a poor stu- 
dent, and when he went home at vacation time, he tramped 
the long journey on foot, stopping at hospitable farm- 
houses on the way for refreshment. One evening an old 
farmer invited him in, and as they sat by the fire, after 



HAVERHILL 



41 



a good supper, they talked of the things the student was 
learning at college. At length the farmer suggested : — 
'' No doubt you know the power of figures ? " 
The student modestly allowed he had learned some- 




HARRIET LIVERMORE 

' She sat among us, at the best, 
A not unfeared, half-welcome guest." 

Snow-Bound 



thing of algebra and some branches of the higher mathe- 
matics. 

" I know it ! I know it ! You are just the man I want to 
see. You know the power of figures ! I have lost a cow ; 
now use your power of figures and find her for me." 



42 WHITTIER-LAND 

The student disclaimed such power, but it was of no 
use. The farmer insisted that one who knew the power of 
figures must be able to locate his cow. Else, of what use 
to go to college ; why not stay at home and find the cows 
after the manner of the unlearned .'* So the student decided 
to quiz a little. He took a piece of chalk and drew crazy 
diagrams on the floor. The farmer thought he recognized 
in the lines the roads and fences of the vicinity, rubbed 
his hands, and exclaimed : — 

" You are coming to it ! Don't tell me you don't know 
the power of figures ! " 

At last, when the poor student had exhausted the power 
of his invention, he threw down the chalk, and pointing 
to the spot where it fell, said : — 

" Your cow is there ! " 

He had a good bed, but could not rest easy on it for 
the thought of how he was to get out of the scrape in the 
morning, when it would be surely known that his figures 
had lied. He decided that he would steal off before any 
of the family had arisen. In the early dawn he was con- 
gratulating himself upon having got out of the house un- 
observed, when he was met at the gate by the old farmer 
himself, who was leading the cow home in triumph. He 
had found her exactly where the figures had foretold. Of 
course the mathematician must go back to breakfast — 
what was he running off for, after doing such a service by 
his learning ? 

They stood again by the cabalistic diagram on the floor 
of the kitchen. 

"You needn't tell me you don't know the power of 
figures," exclaimed the good man, " for the cow was just 
there ! " 

For once, the clergyman said, Satan had done him a 
good turn. 

Nearly all the early letters and poems of Whittier, 
written before he gave up every selfish ambition and 
devoted his life to philanthropic work, show how great 



HAVERHILL 



43 



was the change that came over his spirit when about 
twenty-five years of age. Before that time he imagined 
that the world was treating him harshly, and he was bra- 
cing himself for a contest with it, with a feeling that he 
was surrounded by enemies. His tone was almost inva- 
riably pessimistic. After the change referred to, he habit- 
ually saw friends on every side, gave up selfish ambitions, 





SCENE ON COUNTRY BROOK 



and a cheerful optimism pervaded his outlook upon life. 
The following extract from a letter written in April, 183 1, 
while editing the " New England Review," to a literary 
lady in New Haven, is in the prevailing tone of what he 
wrote in the earlier period. This letter has only lately 
come into my possession, and is now first quoted : — 

" Disappointment in a thousand ways has gone over 
my heart, and left it dust. Yet I still look forward with 
high anticipations. I have placed the goal of my ambi- 
tions high — but with the blessing of God it shall be 



44 WHITTIER-LAND 

reached. The world has at last breathed into my bosom 
a portion of its own bitterness, and I now feel as if I 
would wrestle manfully in the strife of men. If my life is 
spared, the world shall know me in a loftier capacity than 
as a writer of rhymes. [The italics are his own.] There — 
is not that boasting? — But I have said it with a strong 
pulse and a swelling heart, and I shall strive to real- 
ize it." 

In another letter, written at about the sam.e time to the 
same correspondent, he says : " As for tears, I have not 
shed anything of the kind since my last flogging under 
the birchen despotism of the Nadir Shah of our village 
school. I have sometimes wished I could shed tears — 
especially when angry with myself or with the world. 
There is an iron fixedness about my heart on such occa- 
sions which I would gladly melt away." 

(From the birthplace to the Amesbury home is a dis- 
tance of nine miles, traversed by electric cars in less than 
an hour^ Midway is the thriving village of Merrimac, 
formerly known as West Amesbury. It was at Birchy 
Meadow in this vicinity that Whittier taught his first and 
only term of district school, in the winter of 1827-28. 
The road is at considerable distance from the Merrimac 
River, and at several points it surmounts hills which afford 
remarkably fine views of the wide and fertile river valley, 
with occasional glimpses of the river itself. At Pond Hills, 
near the village of Amesbury,' the landscape presented to 
view is one of the widest and loveliest in all this region. 
It is a panorama of the beautifully rounded hills peculiar 
to this section, with a tidal river winding among them with 
many a graceful curve. The electric road we have taken 
is about two miles from the left bank of the river, across 
which we look to the Newbury hills, cultivated to their 
tops, with here and there a church spire indicating the 
location of the distant villages. Every part of this lovely 
valley has been commemorated^ in Whittier's writings, 
prose and verse^ 



HAVERHILL 



45 



If, instead of the trolley, we take the carriage road from 
Haverhill along the bank of the river, we soon come to 
what are left of " the sycamores," planted in 1739 by 
Hugh Tallant, in front of the Saltonstall mansion. This 




THE SYCAMORES 



mansion is now occupied by the Haverhill Historical So- 
ciety, and most of the famous row of " Occidental plane- 
trees " were cut down many years ago, a sacrifice to street 
improvement. Three of the ancient trees still stand, and 
will probably round out the second century of their ex- 
istence. They are about eighty feet in height, and measure 
nearly twenty feet around their trunks. LTnder these trees 
Washington " drew rein," and Whittier repeats the legend 
that he said : — 



46 WHITTIER-LAND 

" I have seen no prospect fairer 
In this goodly Eastern land." 

About a mile below on the northeasterly side of Mill- 
vale, a hill picturesquely crowned with pines attracts at- 
tention. This is the Ramoth Hill immortalized in the 
lovely poem " My Playmate : " — 

" The pines were dark on Ramoth Hill, 
Their song was soft and low. 

'* And still the pines of Ramoth wood 
Are moaning like the sea, — 
The moaning of the sea of change 
Between myself and thee ! " 

Until recently there has been much doubt as to the loca- 
tion of Ramoth Hill, Whittier himself giving no definite 
answer when asked in regard to it. Indeed, the poem as 
originally written had the ti/tle " Eleanor," and the hill 
was given the name of Menatiga. But Mr. J. T. Fields, to 
whom the manuscript was submitted, did not like this 
name, and Whittier changed it to Ramoth, which suited 
his editor's taste. Mr. Alfred A. Ordway, the best author- 
ity on all matters pertaining to Whittier's allusions to 
places in this region, has discovered that the name Me- 
nahga was given to this particular hill in Haverhill by 
Mrs. Mary S. West of Elmwood, one of a family all the 
members of which were dear to Whittier from his boy- 
hood to the close of his life. A letter of Whittier's to 
Mrs. West has come to light, written about the time this 
poem was composed, in which he commends the selec- 
tion of the name of this hill, and intimates that he shall 
use it in a poem. 

On the Country Bridge road, leading from the birth- 
place to Rocks Village, is an ancient edifice, known as the 
"Old Garrison House," which is of interest to Whittier- 
Land pilgrims because it was the home of Whittier's great- 
grandmother, Mary Peaslee, who brought Quakerism into 
the Whittier family. Thomas Whittier, the pioneer, did 



HAVERHILL 



47 



not belong to the Society of Friends, though favorably 
disposed toward the sect. His youngest son, Joseph, 
brought the young Quakeress into the family, and their 
descendants for several generations, down to the time of 
the poet, belonged to the sect founded by her father's 
friend, George Fox. Joseph Peaslee built this house with 
bricks brought from England before 1675. ^^ it was one 
of the largest and strongest houses in the town, in the 
time of King Philip's war it was set apart by the town 
authorities as a house of refusre for the families of the 




OLD GARRISON HOUSE (PEASLEE HOUSE) 



neighborhood, and as a rallying point for the troops kept 
on the scout. There are many port-holes through its thick 
walls. 

A little farther on we come to Rocks Village, pictured 
so perfectly by Whittier in his poem " The Countess," 
that it will be at once recognized : — 

" Over the wooded northern ridge, 
Between its houses brown, 
To the dark tunnel of the bridge 
The street comes stragghng down." 



48 



WHITTIER-LAND 



The bridge across the Merriraac at this point was a cov- 
ered and gloomy structure at the time this poem was 
written. It has since been partially remodeled, and many 
of the houses of the " stranded village," then brown and 
paintless, have received modern improvements. But there 
is enough of antiquity still clinging to the place to make 
it recognizable from Whittier's lines. This was the market 
to which the Whittiers brought much of the produce of 
their farm to barter for household supplies. This was the 
home of Dr. Elias Weld, the "wise old doctor " of " Snow- 
Bound," and it was to him '' The Countess "was inscribed 




ROCKS VILLAGE AND BRIDGE 

Home of the Countess was at further end of the bridge, in house now standing, 
afterward occupied by Whittier's benefactor, Dr. Weld 



— the poem which every year brings many visitors hither, 
for the grave of the Countess is near. 

Whittier was still in his teens when this eccentric phy- 
sician left Rocks Village and removed to Hallowell, 
Maine, and almost half a century had intervened before he 
wrote that remarkable tribute to the friend and benefactor 
of his youth, which is found in the prelude to " The 



HAVERHILL 



49 




RIVER VALLEY, NEAR GRAVE OF COUNTESS 

" For, from us, ere the day was done 
The wooded hills shut out the sun. 
But on the river's further side 
We saw the hill-tops glorified." 

The River Path 



Countess." The good old man died at Hudson, Ohio, a 
few months after the pubHcation of the lines that meant 
so much to his fame, and it is pleasant to know that they 
consoled the last hours of his long life. Whittier did not 
know whether or not the benefactor of his boyhood was 
living in 1863, when he wTote the poem, as is shown in 
the lines : — 

" I know not, Time and Space so intervene, 
Whether, still waiting with a trust serene. 
Thou bearest up thy fourscore years and ten, 
Or, called at last, art now Heaven's citizen." 

And yet they were in correspondence in the previous year, 
as is shown by the fact that I find in an old album of 
Whittier's a photograph labeled by him " Dr. Weld," and 
this photograph, I am assured by Mrs. Tracy, a grand- 
niece of Weld, was taken when he was ninety years of 
age. I think it probable that the sending of this photo- 



50 



WHITTIER-LAND 



graph by the aged physician put Whittier in mind to write 
his Rocks Village poem, with the tribute of remembrance 
and affection contained in its prelude. As to the ancient 

sulky which — 

" Down the village lanes 
Dragged, like a war-car, captive ills and pains," 

it was a chaise with a white canvas top, and the doctor 
always dressed in gray, and drove a sober white horse. 




DR. ELI AS WELD, AT THE AGE OF NINETY 



I have seen a letter of Whittier's written to Dr. Weld, 
then at Hallowell, in March, 1828, in which he says : "I 
am happy to think that I am not forgotten by those for 
whom I have always entertained the most sincere regard. 
I recollect perfectly well that (on one occasion in particu- 
lar) after hearing thy animated praises of Milton and 



HAVERHILL 51 

Thomson I attempted to bring a few words to rhyme and 
measure ; but whether it was poetry run mad, or, as Burns 
says, 'something that was rightly neither,' I cannot now 
ascertain ; I am certain, however, that it was in a great 
measure owing to thy admiration of those poets that I 
ventured on that path which their memory has hallowed, 
in pursuit of — I myself hardly know what — time alone 
must determine. ... I am a tall, dark-complexioned, and, 
I am sorry to say, rather ordinary-looking fellow, bashful, 
yet proud as any poet should be, and believing with the 
honest Scotchman that ' I hae muckle reason to be thank- 
ful that I am as I am.' " ^ It is of interest further to state 
that Whittier's life-long friend and co-laborer in the anti- 
slavery field, Theodore D. Weld, was a nephew of "the 
wise old doctor." Also that another nephew, who was 
adopted as a son by the childless physician, was named 
" Greenleaf " for the young poet in whom he took so much 
interest. The grave of the Countess in the cemetery near 
Rocks Village is now better cared for than when the poem 
was written. This is not the cemetery referred to in the 
poem '• The Old Burying-Ground," which is near the East 
Haverhill church. 

1 This letter has been published in full in a limited edition, by 
Mr. Goodspeed, together with a New Year's Address referred to in 
it as having given offense to some of the citizens of Rocks Village. 
A portion of this Address (which appeared in the Haverhill Gazette, 
January 5, 1828) is given in Life and Letters, pp. 62, 63. The lines 
that seem to have given offense are these : — 

" Rocks folks are wide awake — their old bridge tumbled 
Some years ago, and left them all forsaken ; 
But they have risen, tired of being humbled, 

And the first steps towards a new one taken. 
They 're all alive — their trade becomes more clever, 
And mobs and riots flourish well as ever." 

Thirty-five years later, perhaps remembering the offense he had 
given in his youth by his portrayal of the liveliness of the place, he 
shaded his picture in The Countess with a different pencil, and we 
have a " stranded village " sketched to the life. 



i 



AMESBURY 



II 

AMESBURY 

Following down the left bank of the river, we come, near 
the village of Amesbury, to a sheltered nook between the 
steep northern hill and the broad winding river, known as 
" Pleasant Valley." At some points there is scant room 
for the river road between the high bluff and the water; 
at others a wedge of fertile intervale pushes back the 
steep bank. The comfortable houses of an ancient Quaker 
settlement are perched and scattered along this road in 
picturesque fashion. It was a favorite walk of Whittier 
and his sister, and it is commemorated in " The River 
Path," — 

" Sudden our pathway turned from night ; 
The hills swung open to the light ; 

" Through their green gates the sunshine showed, 
A long, slant splendor downward flowed. 

" Down glade and glen and bank it rolled ; 
It bridged the shaded streani with gold ; 

" And, borne on piers of mist, allied 
The shadowy with the sunlit side ! " 

When Mr. Whittier returned to Amesbury from the last 
visit to his birthplace, referred to in the preceding chap- 
ter, it was by the road passing the Old Garrison House, 
the Countess' grave, Rocks Village, and Pleasant Valley 
He pointed out each feature of the scene that remmded 
him of earlier days. When we came to Pleasant \ alley 
he stopped the carriage at a picturesque wooded knoll 
between the road and the river, and said that here he 



56 WHITTIER-LAND 

used to come with his sister to gather harebells. It was 
so late in the season that every other flower by the road- 
side had been killed by frost ; even the goldenrod was 
more sere than yellow. But the harebells were fresh in 
their delicate beauty, and he gathered a handful of them 
which lighted up his "garden room " for several days. I 
remember that on this occasion an effect referred to in 
''The River Path " was reproduced most beautifully. The 
setting sun, hidden to us, illuminated the hills of New- 
bury : — 

" A tender glow, exceeding fair, 
A dream of day withoiit its glare. 

" With us the damp, the chill, the gloom : 
With them the sunset's rosy bloom ; 

" While dark, through willowy vistas seen, 
The river rolled in shade between." 

To a friend in Brooklyn who inquired in regard to the 
origin of this poem, Mr. Whittier wrote : " The little poem 
referred to was suggested by an evening on the Merrimac 
River, in company with my dear sister, who is no longer 
with me, having crossed the river (as I fervently hope) to 
the glorified hills of God." 

" The Last Walk in Autumn " is another poem inspired 
by the scenery of this locality. At the lower end of this 
valley, near the mouth of the Povvow, on the edge of the 
bluff overlooking the Merrimac, Goody Martin lived more 
than two hundred years ago, and the cellar of her house 
was still to be seen when, in 1857, Whittier first told the 
story of " The Witch's Daughter," the poem now known 
as "Mabel Martin." She was the only woman who suffered 
death on a charge of witchcraft on the north side of the 
Merrimac. One other aged woman in this village was 
imprisoned, and would have been put to death, but for the 
timely collapse of the persecution. She was the wife of 
Judge Bradbury, and lived on the Salisbury side of the 
Powow. In his ballad Whittier traces the path he used to 






AMESBURY 57 

take towards the Goody Martin place, as was his cus- 
tom in many of his ballads. One who desires to take this 
path can enter upon it at the Union Cemetery, where the 
poet is buried. Follow the " level tableland " he describes 
towards the Merrimac, looking down at the left into the 




CURSON'S MILL, ARTICHOKE RIVER 

deep and picturesque valley of the Powow, — a charming 
view of its placid, winding course after it has made its 
plunge of eighty feet over a shoulder of Po Hill, — until 

you 

o . . " see the dull plain fall 
Sheer off, steep -slanted, ploughed by all 
The seasons' rainfalls," 

and you look down upon the broad Merrimac seeking 
" the wave-sung welcome of the sea." Find a path winding 
down the bluff facing the river, half-way down to the hat 
factory which is close to the water, and you are upon the 
location of Goody Martin's cottage. But no trace is now 
to be seen of " the cellar, vine overrun " which the poet 
describes. 

I visited the spot with the poet on the October day 
before referred to, and noted the felicity of his descrip- 
tions of the locality. It is near the river, but high above 



58 WHITTIER-LAND 

it, and one looks down upon the tops of the willows on 
the bank : — 

"And through the willow-boughs below 
She saw the rippled waters shine." 

Opposite Pleasant Valley, on the Newbury side of the 
river, are " The Laurels," " Curson's Mill," and the mouth 
of the Artichoke, celebrated in several poems. In June, 
when the laurels are in bloom, this shore is well worth 
visiting for its natural beauties, as well as for the associa- 
tion of Whittier's frequent allusion to it in prose as well 
as verse. It was for the '* Laurel Party," an annual excur- 
sion of his friends to this shore, that he wrote the poems, 
" Our River," " Revisited," and " The Laurels." In " June 
on the Merrimac " he sings : — 

"And here are pictured Artichoke, 
And Curson's bowery mill ; 
And Pleasant Valley smiles between 
The river and the hill." 

In the stanza preceding this he takes a view down the 
Merrimac, past Moulton's Hill in Newbury, — an emi- 
nence commanding one of the finest views on the river, 
formerly crowned with a castle-like structure occupied 
for several years as the summer residence of Sir Edward 
Thornton, — to the great bend the river makes in passing 
its last rocky barrier at Deer Island. The Hawkswood 
oaks are a magnificent feature of the scene. This estate, 
on the Amesbury side of the river, was formerly occupied 
by Rev. J. C. Fletcher, of P)razilian fame. 

" The Hawkswood oaks, the storm -torn plumes 
Of old pine-forest kings, 
Beneath whose century-woven shade 
Deer Island's mistress sings." 

CThe Merrimac, beautiful as are its banks along its en- 
e course, nowhere presents more picturesque scenery 
than where it passes through the deep valley it has worn 



AMESBURY 59 

for itself between the hills of Amesbury and Newbury, 
and especially where its tidal current is parted by the 
perpendicular cliffs of Deer Island. At this point the 
quaint old chain bridge, built about a century ago, spans 
the stream. This island is the home of Harriet Prescott 
Spofford, who is referred to in the stanza just quoted.* 
About forty years ago, it was proposed to build a summer 
hotel on this island, which is four or five miles from the 
mouth of the Merrimac. I have found among Mr. Whit- 
tier's papers an unfinished poem, protesting against what 
he considered a desecration of this spot which always 




DEER ISLAND AND CHAIN BRIDGE 

had a great charm for him. It is likely that the reason 
why this poem was never finished or published was be- 
cause the project of building a hotel was abandoned. I 
have taken the liberty to give as a title for it " The Plaint 
of the Merrimac." As it was written in almost undeci- 
pherable hieroglyphics, some of the words are conjec- 
tural : — 

" I heard, methought, a murmur faint, 

Our River making its complaint ; 

Complaining in its liquid way. 

Thus it said, or seemed to say : 



6o WHITTIER-LAND 

" ' What 's all this pother on my banks — 
Squinting eyes and pacing shanks — 
Peeping, running, left and right, 
With compass and theodolite? 

" ' Would they spoil this sacred place ? 
Blotch with paint its virgin face ? 
Do they — is it possible — 
Do they dream of a hotel ? 

" ' Match against my moonlight keen 
Their tallow dip and kerosene ? 
Match their low walls, plaster-spread, 
With my blue dome overhead ? 

" ' Bring their hotel din and smell 

Where my sweet winds blow so well, 
And my birches dance and swing, 
While my pines above them sing ? 

" ' This puny mischief has its day, 
But Nature's patient tasks alway 
Begin where Art and Fashion stopped, 
O'ergrow, and conquer, and adopt. 

" ' Still far as now my tide shall flow. 
While age on age shall come and go, 
Nor lack, through all the coming days. 
The grateful song of human praise.' " 

Before the chain bridge was built, a ferry was main- 
tained at the mouth of the Powow, and here Washington 
crossed the river at his last visit to New England. It is 
said that a French ship lay at the wharf near the ferry, 
and displayed the French flag over the American because 
of the French feeling against the policy of Washington's 
administration. Washington refused to land until the 
obnoxious flag w^as lowered to its proper place. 

^t was a one-story cottage on Friend Street, Amesbury, 
to which the Whittiers came in July, 1836 — a cottage 
with but four rooms on the ground floor, and a chamber 
in the attic. The sum paid for this cottage, with about 



AMESBURY 



6i 



an acre of land, was twelve hundred dollars. . The Haver- 
hill farm was sold for three thousand dollar^. Accustomed 
to the comparatively large ancestral home at Haverhill, 
it is no wonder that there was at first a feeling of home- 
sickness, as is evidenced in the diary kept by Elizabeth. 
This feeling was naturally intensified by the prolonged 
absences of her brother, who from 1836 to 1840 was away 
from home most of the time, engaged with his duties as 
secretary of the anti-slavery society in New York, and as 
editor of the " Pennsylvania Freeman " in Philadelphia. 
During these years, the only occupants of the cottage were 
Whittier's mother, his sister Elizabeth, and his aunt Mercy, 
except when his frequent illnesses, and his interest in the 
political events of the North Essex congressional district, 




THE WHITTIER HOME, AMESBURY 



called him home. fBut in 1840, his residence in Amesbury 
became permanent. At about this time he made the tour 
of the country with the English philanthropist, Joseph 
Sturge, who noticed his straitened circumstances, and out 
of the largeness of his heart, in a most delicate way, not 



62 WHITTIER-LAND 

only gave him financial assistance at the time, but seven 
years later enabled him to build a two-story ell to the 
cottage, and add a story to the eastern half of the original 
structure)) A small ell of one story, occupying part of the 
space of the present "garden room," was built by Mr. Whit- 
tier when he bought the cottage in 1836, and this was aunt 
Mercy's room. At the later enlargement of the house this 
small room was lengthened, and a chamber built over it. 
In the lower floor of this enlarged ell is the room which 
has ever since been known as the " garden room,'' because 
it was built into the garden, and a much prized fruit tree 
was sacrificed to give it place. The chamber over this 
room was occupied by Elizabeth until her death in 1864, 
and after that by Mr. Whittier. 

While repairs were making in this part of the house in 
the summer of 1903, a package of old letters was found 
in the wall, bearing the date of 1847, the year when the 
enlargement was made. One of them reveals the source 
of the money required for the improvement. It was from 
Lewis Tappan of New York, the financial backbone of 
the anti-slavery society, inclosing a check for arrears of 
salary due Whittier for editorial work. Mr. Tappan writes : 
" I will ask the executive committee to raise the compensa- 
tion. I wish we could pay you according to the real value 
of your productions, rather than according to their length. 
. . . Inclosed is a check for one hundred dollars. Mr. 
Sturge authorizes me to draw on him for one thousand 
dollars at any time when you and I should think it could 
be judiciously invested in real estate for your family. I 
can procure the money in a week by drawing on him. 
When you have made up your mind as to the investment, 
please let me know." 

At this time the poet was feeling the pinch of real pov- 
erty and was living in a little one-story cottage that gave 
him no room for a study, and no suitable chamber for a 
guest. It was at this time that he received the letter which 
contained not only a check for overdue salary, but a pro- 



AMESBURY 



63 



mise of a gift of one thousand dollars from his generous 
English friend, Joseph Sturge. The result of this benefi- 
cence was the building of the "garden room," to which 
thousands of visitors come from all parts of this and other 
countries, because in it were written " Snow-Bound," " The 




JOSEPH STURGE, THE ENGLISH PHILANTHROPIST 

" The very gentlest of all human natures 
He joined to courage strong." 

In Remembrance of Joseph Sturge 



Eternal Goodness," and most of the poems of Whittier's 
middle life and old age. Mr. Sturge had sent Whittier six 
years earlier a draft for one thousand dollars, intending 
it should be used by him in traveling for his health. 
But Whittier had given most of this toward the support 
of an anti-slavery paper in New York. Two years later 
the same generous friend offered to pay all his expenses 



64 WHITTIER-LAND 

if he would come to England as his guest, an offer he was 
obliged to decline. A portrait of Sturge is appropriately 
placed in this room. Tappan's letter was written April 21, 
1847, and the addition to the cottage was built in the 
summer of that year. The whole expense of the improve- 
ment was no doubt covered by Sturge's gift. Other inter- 
esting letters of the same period were included in the 
package in the wall. 

In a drawer of the desk is a most remarkable album 
of autographs of public men, presented to Mr. Whittier 
on his eightieth birthday, by the Essex Club. It is a 
tribute to the poet signed by every member of the United 
States Senate and House of Representatives, the Supreme 
Court of the United States, the Governor, ex-Governors, 
and Supreme Court of Massachusetts, and all the mem- 
bers of the Essex Club ; also, many distinguished citizens, 
such as George Bancroft (who adds to his autograph 
"with special good wishes to the coming octogenarian "), 
Robert C. Winthrop, Frederick Douglass, and J. G. 
Blaine. An eloquent speech of Senator Hoar, who sug- 
gested this unique tribute, is engrossed in the exquisite 
penmanship of a colored man, to whom was intrusted 
the ornamental pen-work of the whole volume. The con- 
gressional signatures were obtained by Congressman 
Coggswell of the Essex district. It is noticeable that no 
Southern member declined to sign this tribute to one so 
identified with the anti-slavery movement. 

vThe "garden room" remains almost precisely as when 
occupied by the poet — the same chairs, open stove, 
books, pictures, and even wall-paper and carpet, remain- 
ing in it as he placed them. In the north window the 
flowers pressed between the plates of glass are those 
on receipt of which he wrote " The Pressed Gentian." By 
the desk is the cane he carried for more than fifty years, 
made of wood from his oflice in Eennsylvania Hall, burned 
by a pro-slavery mob in i838.\lThis is the cane for which 
he wrote the poem " The Relic : " — 



AMESBURY 65 

" And even this relic from thy shrine, 

O holy Freedom ! hath to me 
A potent power, a voice and sign 

To testify of thee ; 
And, grasping it, methinks I feel 
A deeper faith, a stronger zeal." j 

He had many canes given him, some vakiable, but this 
plain stick was the only one he ever carried. (^With this 
cane may be seen one made of oak from the cottage of 




THE "GARDEN ROOM," AMESBURY H(jME 

Barbara Frietchie^ not, as was erroneously stated in 
the biography, a dane carried by the patriotic Barbara. 
^The portraits he hung in this room are of Garrison, 
rhomas Starr King, Emerson, Longfellow, Sturge, " Chi- 
nese " Gordon, and Matthew Franklin Whittier. There 
is also a fine picture of his birthplace, a water-color sent 
him by Bayard Taylor from the most northern point in 
Norway, and a picture, also sent by Bayard Taylor, of the 
Rock in El Ghor, on receipt of which the poem of that 
title was written. The Norway picture was painted by Mrs. 



66 WHITTIER-LAND 

Taylor, and represents tl:i^e surroundings of the northern- 
most church in the world/ The mirror in this room is an 
heirloom of the Whittier family, dating at least a century 
before the birth of the poet. The little table under it is 
almost equally old. 

The album containing the likeness of Dr. Weld has 
also a photograph under which Whittier has written 
" Mary E. S. Thomas,'' and this has a special interest, as 
it is a portrait of his relative, schoolmate, and life-long 
friend, Mary Emerson Smith, who became the wife of 
Judge Thomas of Covington, Ky. She was a grand- 
daughter of Captain Nehemiah Emerson, who fought at 
Bunker Hill, was an officer in the army of Washington, 
serving at Valley Forge and at the surrender of Bur- 
goyne, and her grandmother was Mary Whittier — a 
cousin of the poet's father, whom Whittier used to call 
" aunt Mary." For a time, when in his teens, he stayed 
at Captain Emerson's, and went to school from there, mak- 
ing himself useful in doing chores. Mary Smith, then a 
young girl, passed much of her time at her grandfather's, 
and later was a fellow-student of Whittier's at the Acad- 
emy. I think there is now no impropriety in stating that 
it is to her that the poem " Memories " refers.^ She was 
living at the time when the biography of Whittier was 
written, and for that reason her name was not given, but 
only a veiled reference in "Life and Letters," as at page 
276. During many years of her widowhood she spent the 
summer months in New England, and occasionally met 
Mr. Whittier at the mountains. They were in friendly 
correspondence to the close of his life. She survived him 

1 It is of curious interest that although the poem Memories 
was first published in 1 841, the description of the " beautiful and 
happy girl " in its opening lines is identical with that of one of 
the characters in Moll Pitcher, published nine years earlier, and I 
have authority for saying that Mary Smith was in mind when that 
portrait was drawn. Probably the reason why Whittier never al- 
lowed Moll Pitcher to be collected was because he used lines from 
it in poems written at later dates. 



AMESBURY 



67 




MARY EMERSON (SMITH) THOMAS 



several years. It has been suggested with some show of 
probability that it is a memory of the days they spent to- 
gether at her grandfather's that is embodied in the poem 
"■ My Playmate." At the time when this poem was writ- 
ten she was living in Kentucky. 

" She lives where all the golden year 
Her summer roses blow ; 
The dusky children of the sun 
Before her come and go." 

But this poem, like others of Whittier's, is probably a 
composite of memories and largely imaginative, as is 
shown in what is elsewhere said about the localities of 
Ra^noth Hill and Folly Mill. 
(Tn the " garden room " also is a miniature on ivory of 



68 



WHITTIER-LAND 



a beautiful girl of seventeen, crowned with roses. This is 
Evelina Bray of Marblehead, a classmate of Whittier's at 
the Academy in the year 1827, when this portrait was 
painted. But for adverse circumstances, the school ac- 
quaintance which led to a warm attachment between them 
might have resulted in marriage. But the case was hope- 
less from\the first. He was but nineteen years old, and 




EVELINA BRAY, AT THE AGE OF SEVENTEEN 



she seventeen. On both sides the families opposed the 
match. Among the Quakers marriage " outside of society " 
was not to be thought of in those days ; in his case it 
would mean the breaking up of a family circle dependent 
on him, and a severance from his loved mother and sisterj 
This same reason prevented the ripening of other attach- 



AMESBURY 



69 



ments in later life ; for in each case his choice would 
have been " out of society." Two or three years after 
they parted at the close of 
an Academy term, he walked 
from Salem to Marblehead 
before breakfast on a June 
morning, to see his school- 
mate. He was then editing 
the "American Manufac- 
turer," in Boston. She could 
not invite him in, and they 
walked to the old ruined fort, 
and sat on the rocks over- 
looking the beautiful harbor. 
This meeting is commemo- 
rated in three stanzas of one 
of the loveliest of his poems, 
"A Sea Dream " — a poem, 
by the way, not as a whole 

referring to Marblehead or to the friend of his youth. 
But I have good authority for the statement that these 
three stanzas refer directly to the Marblehead incident. 
All who are familiar with the locality will recognize it in 
these verses : — 




WHITTIER, AT THE AGE OF 
TWENTY-TWO 



The waves are glad in breeze and sun ; 

The rocks are fringed with foam ; 
I walk once more a haunted shore, 

A stranger, yet at home, 

A land of dreams I roam. 

Is this the wind, the soft sea-wind 
That stirred thy locks of brown ? 

Are these the rocks whose mosses knew 
The trail of thy light gown, 
Where boy and girl sat down ? 



*' I see the gray fort's broken wall, 
The boats that rock below ; 



70 WHITTIER-LAND 

And, out at sea, the passing sails 
We saw so long ago 
Rose-red in morning's glow." 

With a single exception, these schoolmates did not meet 
again for more than fifty years, and Whittier was never 
aware of this exception. In middle life, when the poet 
was editing the " Pennsylvania Freeman," and Miss Bray 
was engaged with Catherine Beecher in educational work, 
they once happened to sit side by side in the pew of a 
Philadelphia church, but he left without recognizing her, 
and she was too shy to speak to him. I had the story 
from a lady who as a little girl sat in the pew with them, 
and knew them both. Miss Bray married an Englishman 
named Downey, and in a romantic way ■^ Mr. Whittier 
discovered her address. Mr. Downey was an evangelist 
making a crusade in the great cities against Romanism, 
and met his death from wounds received in facing a New 
York mob. W^hittier, supposing he was poor, and that his 
schoolmate was having a hard time, sent Downey money 
without her knowledge. She accidentally discovered this 
and returned the money. In her widowhood she occasion- 
ally corresponded with Mr. Whittier, who induced her to 
come to the reunion of his schoolmates in 1885, more 
than fifty years after their parting at Marblehead, and 
more than forty years after the chance meeting in Phila- 

1 This is how it happened : Mr. Downey saw a newspaper item to 
the effect that Mrs. S. F. Smith was a classmate of Whittier's. He 
knew that his wife was a classmate of Mrs. Smith, and " put this and 
that together." Without saying anything to her about it, he sent a 
tract of his to Whittier, and with it a note about his work as an evan- 
gelist ; in a postscript he said, " Did you ever know Evelina Bray ? " 
Whittier wrote a criticism of the tract, which was against Colonel 
Ingersoll, in which he said, " It occurs to me to say that in thy tract 
there is hardly enough charity for that unfortunate man, who, it 
seems to me, is much to be pitied for his darkness of unbelief." 
He added as a postscript, " What does thee know about Evelina 
Bray ? " Downey replied that she was his wife, but did not let her 
know of this correspondence, or of his receipt of money from her 
old schoolmate. He was not poor, only eccentric. 



I 



AMESBURY 71 

delphia. At this reunion she gave him the miniature 
reproduced in our engraving, which was returned to her 
after Whittier's death. When she died it went to another 
schoohnate, the wife of Rev. Dr. S. F. Smith, author of 




EVELINA BRAY DOWNEY 



our national hymn. From her it came to Whittier's niece, 
and is now kept in the drawer where the poet originally 
placed it. With it is the first portrait ever taken of Whit- 
tier — it being painted by the same artist (J. S. Porter) 
two or three years after the girl's miniature, while he was 
editing the " Manufacturer," 



72 WHITTIER-LAND 

Here is an extract from a note Whittier sent Mrs. 
Downey soon after the reunion : " Let me thank thee for 
the picture thee so kindly left with me. The sweet, lovely 
girl face takes me back to the dear old days, as I look at 
it. I wish I could give thee something half as valuable in 
return." The portrait of Mrs. Downey at the age of eighty, 
here given, is from a photograph she contributed to an 
album presented to Whittier by his schoolmates of 1827, 
after the reunion of 1885. Rev. Dr. S. F. Smith attended 
this reunion in place of his wife, who was then an invalid, 
and he wrote to his wife this account of the appearance 
of her old schoolmate at that meeting : " She looked, O so 
distingue^ in black silk, with a white muslin veil, reaching 
over the silver head and down below the shoulders. Just 
as if she were a Romish Madonna, who had stepped out 
from an old church painting to hold an hour's communion 
with earth." 

I was in correspondence with Mrs. Downey during the 
last years of her life, but she would not give me permission 
to call upon her, and the reason given was that I had seen 
the miniature, and she preferred to be remembered by that. 
She was very shy about telling of her early acquaintance 
with Whittier, and whatever I could learn was by indirec- 
tion. For instance, I obtained the Marblehead story by 
her sending me a copy of Whittier's poems which he had 
given her, and she had drawn a line around the stanzas 
quoted above. No word accompanied the book. Of course 
I guessed what she meant, and asked if my guess was cor- 
rect. She replied "Yes," and no more. Whittier said he 
had the Captain Ireson story from a schoolmate who came 
from Marblehead. I asked her if she, as the only Marble- 
head schoolmate, was the person referred to, and received 
an emphatic "No." To an intimate friend she once said 
that during her early acquaintance with Whittier it seemed 
as if the devil kept whispering to her, " He is only a shoe- 
maker ! " 

The apartment now used as a reception room w^as the 



AMESBURY 73 

kitchen of the original cottage, and has the large fireplace 
and brick oven that were universal in houses built a 
century ago. A small kitchen was later built as an ell, 
and this central room became the dining room, remain- 
ing so as long as Mr. Whittier lived. In the reception 
room is a large bookcase filled with a part of the poet's 
library, exactly as when he was living here. His books 
overrun all the rooms in the house, and many are packed 
in closets. The large engraving of Lincoln over the man- 
tel is an artist's proof, and was placed there by Whittier 
forty years ago. An ancient mirror in this room, sur- 
mounted by a gilt eagle, was broken by a lightning stroke 
in September, 1872. The track of the electrical current 
may still be seen in the blackening of a gilt moulding in 
the upper left corner. The broken glass fell over a mem- 
ber of the family sitting under it, and Whittier himself, 
who was standing near the door of the " garden room," was 
thrown to the floor. All in the house were stunned and 
remained deafened for several minutes, but no one was 
seriously injured. Up to that time the house had been 
protected by lightning rods ; but Mr. Whittier now had 
them removed, and refused to have them replaced, though 
much solicited by agents. In revenge, one of the per- 
sistent brotherhood issued a circular having a picture of 
this house with a thunderbolt descending upon it, as an 
awful warning against neglect ! He had the impudence to 
emphasize his fulmination by printing a portrait of the 
poet, who, it was intimated, would yet be punished for 
defying the elements. 

The old parlor, the principal room of the original cot- 
tage, has suffered no change in the several remodelings of 
the house. The beams in the corners show a frame of the 
olden style — for the cottage had been built many years 
when the Whittiers came here. The clear pine boards 
in the dado are two feet in width. In this room are placed 
many memorials of the poet of interest to visitors. What 
to him was the most precious thing in the house is the por- 



74 WHITTIER-LAND 

trait of his mother over the mantel — a work of art that 
holds the attention of the most casual visitor. The like- 
ness to her distinguished son is remarked by all. One sees 
strength of character in the beautiful face, and a dignity 
that is softened by sweetness and serenity of spirit. The 
plain lace cap, white kerchief, drab shawl, and folded hands 
typify all the Quaker virtues that were preeminently hers. 
On the opposite wall is the crayon likeness of Eliza- 
beth, the dearly loved sister, so tenderly apostrophized in 
" Snow-Bound : " — 

" I cannot feel that thou art far, 
Smce near at need the angels are ; 
And when the sunset gates unbar, 

Shall I not see thee waiting stand, 
And, white against the evening star, 

The welcome of thy beckoning hand ? " 

When she died, in 1864, her friend, Lucy Larcom, had 
this excellent portrait made and presented it to the be- 
reaved brother, and it has hung on this wall nearly forty 
years. All the other members of the " Snovv-Bound " fam- 
ily are here represented by portraits, except the father and 
uncle Moses, of whom no likenesses exist, save as found 
in the poet's lines. The Hoit portrait of Whittier, painted 
when he was about forty years of age, was kept out of 
sight in a seldom-used chamber, while the poet was living, 
for he allowed no picture of himself to be prominently 
displayed. The portrait of his brother was painted when 
he was about forty years of age. A small photograph of 
his older sister, Mary Caldwell, is shown, and a silhouette 
of aunt Mercy ; also a portrait of his brother's daughter, 
Elizabeth (Mrs. Pickard), who was a member of his house- 
hold for twenty years, and to whom he left this house and 
its contents by his will. Her son Greenleaf, to whom 
when four years of age his granduncle inscribed the 
poem " A Name," now resides here. 

In this parlor is the desk on which " Snow- Bound " was 
written, also " The Tent on the Beach " and other poems of 



AMESBURY 



75 



this period. The success of these poems enabled him to 
buy a somewhat better desk, now to be seen in the " garden 
room," w^here this desk formerly stood. In this desk are 
presentation copies of many books, with the autographs 
of their authors — Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lydia Maria 




MRS. PICKARD 



Child, Miss Mitford, Julia Ward Howe, John Hay, T. B. 
Aldrich, and others. Here also is the diary kept by Eliza- 
beth Whittier, in the years 1835-37, covering the period 
of the removal from Haverhill to Amesbury. Of antiqua- 
rian interest is an account-book of the Whittier family, 
from 1786 to 1800, going into minute details of household 
expenses, and containing many times repeated the auto- 
graphs of Whittier's grandfather, his father, and his uncles 
Moses and Obadiah, who recorded their annual settle- 
ments of accounts in this book. Near the desk are bound 



-](> WHITTIER-LAND 

volumes of papers edited by Whittier — the " New England 
Review" of 1830, the "Pennsylvania Freeman " of 1840, 
and the " National Era " of 1847-50. These contain much 
of his prose and verse never collected. The Rogers group 
of statuary representing Whittier, Beecher, and Garrison 
listening to the story of a fugitive slave girl, who holds 
an infant in her arms, is in the corner of the room, where 
it has been for about thirty years. The garden, in the 
care of which Mr. Whittier took much pleasure, comprises 
about one half acre of land. He had peach, apple, and 
pear trees — but the peaches gave out and were not re- 
newed. He also raised grapes, quinces, and small fruit 
in abundance. The rosebush he prized as his mother's 
favorite is still flourishing, as are also the fine magnolia, 
laburnum, and cut-leaved birch of his planting. The ash 
tree in front of the house was planted by his mother. 

While gathering grapes in an arbor in this garden, in 
1847, Mr. Whittier received a bullet wound in the cheek. 
Two boys were firing at a mark on the grounds of a 
neighbor, and this mark was near where Whittier stood, 
but on account of a high fence they did not see him. 
When the bullet struck him, he was so concerned lest his 
mother should be alarmed by the accident that he said 
nothing, not even notifying the boys. He bound up his 
bleeding face in a handkerchief and called on Dr. Spar- 
hawk, who lived near. As soon as the wound was dressed, 
he came home and gave his family their first notice of the 
accident. The boys had not then learned the result of 
their carelessness. The lad who fired the gun was named 
Philip Butler, and he has since acquired a high reputation 
as an artist. The painting representing the Haverhill 
homestead which is to be seen at the birthplace was exe- 
cuted by this artist. He tells of the kindness with which 
Whittier received his tearful confession. It was during 
the first days of the Mexican war, and some of the papers 
humorously commented upon it as a singular fact that 
the first blood drawn was from the veins of a Quaker who 
had so actively opposed entering upon that war. 






'^^'••m^ji 



ZH ,tfe*Jj 






SCENE IN GARDEN 



, AT\! 



ii 




HITTIER'S FUNERAL 



AMESBURY 77 

Once while his guest at Amesbury, I went with him to 
town meeting. He was one of the first men in the town to 
vote that morning, and after voting spent an hour talking 
politics with his townsmen. General C, his candidate for 
Congress, had been intemperate, and the temperance men 
were making that excuse for voting in favor of Colonel F., 
who, Whittier said, always drank twice as much as C, but 
was harder headed and stood it better. Other candidates 
were being scratched for reasons as flimsy, and our Grand 
Old Man was getting disgusted with the Grand Old Party, 




* THE FERRY, SALISBURY POINT 

Mouth of Powow in foreground at the right hidden by its own banks in this picture. 
Havvkswood in distance at extreme right 

as represented at that meeting. He said to a friend he 
met, " The Republicans are scratching like wild cats." 
In the evening an old friend and neighbor called on him, 
and was complaining of Blaine and other party leaders. 
At last Mr. Whittier said, " Friend Turner, has thee met 
many angels and saints in thy dealings with either of the 
parties ? Thy experience should teach thee not to expect 
too much of human nature." On the same evening he told 
of a call Mr. Blaine made upon him some time previously. 
The charm of his manner, he said, recalled that of Henry 
Clay, as he remembered him. On that occasion Blaine 
made a suggestion for the improvement of a verse in the 



78 WHITTIER-LAND 

poem "Among the Hills," which Whittier adopted. The 
verse is descriptive of a country maiden, who was said 

to be 

" Not beautiful in curve and line." 

Blaine suggested as an amendment, — 

" Not /a/r alone in curve and line ; " 

and this is the reading in the latest editions. 

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, during his residence 
in Newburyport, was often a guest at the Amesbury home, 
and he has this to say of each member of the family : 
" The three members of the family formed a perfect com- 
bination of wholly varying temperaments. Mrs. Whittier 
was placid, strong, sensible, an exquisite housekeeper 
and ' provider ; ' it seems to me that I have since seen 
no whiteness to be compared to the snow of her table- 
cloths and napkins. But her soul was of the same hue ; 
and all worldly conditions and all the fame of her children 
— for Elizabeth Whittier then shared the fame — were to 
her wholly subordinate things, to be taken as the Lord 
gave. On one point only this blameless soul seemed to 
have a shadow of solicitude, this being the new wonder 
of Spiritualism, just dawning on the world. I never went 
to the house that there did not come from the gentle lady, 
very soon, a placid inquiry from behind her knitting- 
needles, ' Has thee any farther information to give in re- 
gard to the spiritual communications, as they call them ? ' 
But if I attempted to treat seriously a matter which then, 
as now, puzzled most inquirers by its perplexing details, 
there would come some keen thrust from Elizabeth Whit- 
tier which would throw all serious solution further off than 
ever. She was indeed a brilliant person, unsurpassed in 
my memory for the light cavalry charges of wit ; as unlike 
her mother and brother as if she had been born into a 
different race. Instead of his regular features she had a 
wild, bird-like look, with prominent nose and large liquid 
dark eyes, whose expression vibrated every instant be- 



AMESBURY 



79 



tween melting softness and impetuous wit ; tliere was 
nothing about her that was not sweet and kindly, but you 
were constantly taxed to keep up \vith her sallies and hold 
your own ; while her graver brother listened with delighted 
admiration, and rubbed his hands over bits of merry sar- 
casm which were utterly alien to his own vein." 

The village of Amesbury enjoyed a sense of proprietor- 
ship in Whittier which it never lost, even when Danvers 




POWOW RIVER AND PO HILL 



claimed him for a part of each year. He did not give up 
the old house, consecrated by memories of his mother and 
sister, but returned to it oftener and oftener in his last 
years, and he hoped that he might spend his last days on 
earth where his mother and sister died. The feeling of the 
people of Amesbury was expressed in a poem written by 
a neighbor, and published in the village paper, under the 
title of " Ours," some stanzas of which are here given : — 

" I say it softly to myself, 

I whisper to the swaying flowers, 

When he goes by, ring all your bells 

Of perfume, ring, for he is ours. 



8o WHITTIER-LAND 

" Ours is the resolute, firm step, 

Ours the dark lightning of the eye. 
The rare sweet smile, and all the joy 
Of ownership, when he goes by. 

" I know above our simple spheres 

His fame has flown, his genius towers ; 
These are for glory and the worlds 
But he himself is only ours." 

The Friends' meeting-house, in 1836, was nearly oppo- 
site the Whittier cottage, on the site of the present French 
Catholic church. Two centuries ago there had been an 
earlier meeting-house of the Society, also on Friend 




FRIENDS' MEETING-HOUSE AT AMESBURY 



Street, and the name of the street was given on this ac- 
count. The present meeting-house, on the same street, 
was built in 185 1, upon plans made by Mr. Whittier, who 
was chairman of the committee having it in charge. He 
once told me that some conservative Friends were wor- 
ried lest he make the house too ornate. To satisfy them. 



AMESBURY 8i 

he employed three venerable carpenters, one of them a 
Quaker minister and the other two elders of the Society, 
and the result was this perfectly plain, neat structure, 
comfortable in all its appointments. Visitors like to find 
the seat usually occupied by Whittier. It is now marked 




INTERIOR OF FRIENDS' MEETING-HOUSE 

Whittier's usual seat marked, on left side, near " facing seats." 

by a silver plate. I have accompanied him to a First Day 
service here, in which for a half hour no one was moved 
to say a word. And this was the kind of service he much 
preferred to one in which the time was "fully occupied." 
The meeting was dismissed without a spoken word, the 
signal being the shaking of hands by two of the elders 
on the " facing seats." Then each worshiper shook the 
hand of the person next him. There was no sudden sep- 
aration. The company formed itself into groups for a 
pleasant social reunion. In the group that surrounded 
Whittier were ten or twelve octogenarians, whom he told 



82 WHITTIER-LAND 

me he had met in this way ahiiost every week since his 
boyhood; for even when living in Haverhill, this was the 
meeting his family attended. It was delightful to see the 
warmth and tenderness of the greetings of these venera- 
ble life-long friends. I once accompanied him to a devo- 
tional meeting, where many of the leading Friends of the 
Society were present, and as the papers had announced 
the names of several speakers from distant States, he ex- 
pressed the fear that there would be no opportunity to 
get " into the quiet." As the speakers followed each 
other in rapid succession, he asked me if I had a bit of 
paper and a pencil with me. Then he appeared to be 
taking notes of the proceedings. I fancied some of the 
speakers noticed his pencil, and were spurred by it to 
an enlargement of utterance. When we were at home, 
I asked what he had written. He smiled and handed 
me his " notes," which are before me as I write. " Man 
spoke," "Woman sang," "Man prayed," and so on for no 
less than fourteen items. Being slightly deaf, he had heard 
scarcely anything, and had been noting the number and 
variety of the performances. It was his protest against 
much speaking. At dinner the same day, his cousin, Jo- 
seph Cartland, commented upon the inarticulate sounds 
that accompanied the remarks of one or two of the speak- 
ers. " Let us shame them out of it," he said, " let 's call 
it grunting." " Oh, no, Joseph," said Whittier, "don't thee 
do that — take away the grunt, and nothing is left ! " 

Mr. Whittier had many wonderful stories illustrating the 
guidance of the spirit to which members of the Society of 
Friends submitted in the daily intercourse of life. One was 
of an aged Friend, who never failed to attend meeting on 
First Day. But one morning he told his wife that he was 
impelled to take a walk instead of going to meeting, and he 
knew not whither he should go. He went into the country 
some distance and came to a lane which led to a house. 
He was impressed to take this lane, and soon reached a 
house where a funeral service was in progress. At the 



AMESBURY 



«^3 



close of the service he arose, and said that he knew no- 
thing of the circumstances connected with the death of 
the young woman lying in the casket, but he wms im- 
pelled to say that she had been accused of something of 
which she was not guilty, and the false accusation had has- 
tened her death. Then he added that there was a person 
in the room who knew she was not guilty, and called upon 
this person, whoever it might be, to vindicate the character 




CAPTAINS WELL 



of the deceased. After a solemn pause, a woman arose 
and confessed she had slandered the dead girl. In telling 
such stories as this, Mr. Whittier did not usually express 
full and unreserved belief in their truth, but he main- 
tained the attitude of readiness to believe anything of 
this kind which was well authenticated, and he approved 
of the methods of work adopted by the Society for Psy- 
chical Research in England and in this country. 

The hills encircling the lovely valley of the short and 
busy Powow River, beginning with the southwestern ex- 
tremity of the amphitheatre, are : Bailey's, on the decli- 



84 WHITTIER-LAND 

vity of which, overlooking the Merrimac, is the site of 
Goody Martin's cottage, the scene of the poem of " IVIa- 
bel Martin ; " next is the ridge on which is the Union 
Cemetery where Whittier is buried ; then Whittier Hill, 
named not for the poet but for his first American ances- 
tor who settled here, and locally called " Whitcher Hill " 
— showing the ancient pronunciation of the name ; then, 
across the Powow, are Po, Mundy, Brown's, and Rocky 
hills. On a lower terrace of the Union Cemetery ridge, 
and near the cemetery, is the Macy house, built before 
1654 by Thomas Macy, first town clerk of Amesbury (and 
ancestor of Edwin M. Stanton, the great war secretary), 
who w^as driven from the town for harboring a proscribed 
Quaker in 1659, as told in the poem "The Exiles;"^ 
also, the birthplace of Josiah Bartlett, first signer of 
the Declaration of Independence after Hancock, whose 
statue, given by Jacob R. Huntington, a public-spirited 
citizen of Amesbury, stands in Huntington Square ; and 
near by is " The Captain's Well," dug by Valentine Bag- 
ley in pursuance of a vow, as told in Whittier's poem ; 
also the Home for Aged Women, for which Whittier left 
by his will nearly $10,000. It is to a view of Newbury- 
port as seen from Whittier Hill, a distance of five miles, 
that the opening lines of " The Preacher " refer : — 

" P'ar down the vale, my friend and I 
Beheld the old and quiet town ; 
The ghostly sails that out at sea 
Flapped their white wings of mystery ; 
The beaches glimmering in the sun, 
And the low wooded capes that run 
Into the sea-mist north and south ; 
The sand -bluffs at the river's mouth ; 
The swinging chain-bridge, and, afar, 
The foam-line of the harhor-bar." 

The cemetery in which Wliittier is buried can be reached 

1 This house is now cared for by the Josiah Bartlett chapter of 
the Daughters of the Revolution. 



AMESBURY 



85 



by either the electric line from Merrimac, or the one from 
Newburyport — the latter approaching nearest the part in 
which is the Whittier lot. This lot is in the section re- 
served for the Society of Friends, and is surrounded 
by a well-kept hedge of arbor vitae. Here is buried 
each member of the family commemorated in the poem 
" Snow- Bound," and also the niece of the poet, who was 
for twenty years a member of his household. There is a 
row of nine plain marble tablets, much alike, with Whit- 
tier's slightly the largest. At the corner where his brother 
is buried is a tall cedar, and at the foot of his own grave 
is another symmetrical tree of the same kind. Between 
him and his brother lie their father and mother, their two 




WHITTIER LOT, UNION CEMETERY, AMESBURY 

sisters, their uncle Moses and aunt Mercy. His niece, 
daughter of his brother, has a place by his side. Inclosed 
by the same hedge is the burial lot of his dearly-loved 
cousin, Joseph Cartland. For those who take note of 
dates it may be said that his father died in 1830, and not, 
as stated on his headstone, one year later. 

Po Hill, originally called Powow, because of the tradi- 



86 WHITTIER-LAND 

tion that the Indians used to hold their powwows upon its 
summit, is three hundred and thirty-two feet high, and 
commands a view so extended that many visitors make 
the ascent. One of Whittier's early prose legends is of a 
bewitched Yankee whose runaway horse took him to the 
top of this hill into a midnight powwow of Indian ghosts. 
In describing the hill he says : " It is a landmark to the 
skippers of the coasting craft that sail up Newburyport 
harbor, and strikes the eye by its abrupt elevation and 
orbicular shape, the outlines being as regular as if struck 
off by the sweep of a compass." From it in a clear day 
may be seen Mount Washington, ninety-eight miles away ; 
the Ossipee range ; Passaconaway ; Whiteface ; Kearsarge 
in Warner ; Monadnock ; W^achusett ; Agamenticus and 
Bonny Beag in Maine ; the Isles of Shoals with White 
Island light ; Boon Island in Maine ; and nearer at hand 
Newburyport with its harbor and bay ; Plum Island ; Cape 
Ann ; Salisbury and Hampton beaches ; Boar's Head and 
Little Boar's Head ; Crane Neck and many other of the 
beautiful hills of Newbury, Rowley, Ipswich, and Dan- 
vers. The view of Cape Ann as seen from Po Hill is 
referred to by Whittier at the opening of the poem " The 
Garrison of Cape Ann : " — 

" From the hills of home forth looking, far beneath the tent-like 

span 
Of the sky, I see the white gleam of the headland of Cape Ann." 

Down the south side of the Po flows the Powow River in 
a series of cascades, the finest of which are now hidden 
by the mills, or arched over by the main street of the 
village of Amesbury. The hill is celebrated in several 
of Whittier's poems, including " Abram Morrison," " Mir- 
iam," and " Cobbler Keezar's Vision." The Powow, a 
little way above its plunge over the rocks where it gives 
power for the mills, flows in front of the Whittier home, 
and but the width of a block distant. The surface of 
its swift current is but a few feet below the level of 



AMESBURY 



87 




THE FOUNTAIN, ON MUNDY 



HILL 



Friend Street. Po Hill rises steeply from its left bank.^ The 
Powow is mentioned in the poem " The Fountain : " — 

" Where the birch canoe had gUded 

Down the swift Powow, 
Dark and gloomy bridges strided 

Those clear waters now ; 
And where once the beaver swam, 
Jarred the wheel and frowned the dam." 

"The Fountain" is a spring that may be found on 
the western side of Mundy Hill. The oak mentioned in 
this poem is gone, and a willow takes its place. H^e 
Rocky Hill meeting-house is well worth the attention of 



88 



WHITTIER-LAND 



visitors, as a well-preserved specimen of the meeting- 
houses of the olden time. Its pulpit, pews, and galleries 
retain their original form as when built in 1785. It is situ- 
ated on the easternmost of the fine circlet of hills that 




Kill 
Iltll 




ROCKY HILL CHURCH, BUILT IN 1785 



incloses the valley of the Powow. This hill is well named, 
for here the melting glaciers left their most abundant de- 
posit of boulders. A trolley line from Amesbury to Salis- 
bury Beach passes this venerable edifice. 

Salisbury Beach, now covered with summer cottages, 
will hardly be recognized as the place described by Whit- 
tier in his "Tent on the Beach." When that poem was 
written, not one of these hundreds of cottages w^as built, 
and those who encamped here brought tents. Hampton 
Beach is a continuation of Salisbury Beach beyond the 
state line into New Hampshire. It has given its name to 
one of the most notable of Whittier's poems, and several 
ballads refer to it. " The Wreck of Rivermouth " has for 
its scene the mouth of the Hampton River, which, wind- 
ing down from the uplands across salt meadow^s, and 
dividing this beach, finds its outlet to the sea. At the 



AMESBURY 



89 



northern end of the beach is the picturesque promontory 
of Boar's Head, and eastward are seen the Isles of Shoals, 
and in the further distance the blue disk of Agamenticus. 
Whittier describes the place with his usual exactness : — 

" And fair are the sunny isles in view- 
East of the grisly Head of the Boar, 
And Agamenticus lifts its blue 

Disk of a cloud the woodlands o'er ; 
And southerly, when the tide is down, 
'Twixt white sea-waves and sand-hills brown, 
The beach -birds dance and the gray gulls wheel 
Over a floor of burnished steel." 

Rev. J. C. Fletcher, in an article published in 1879, 
says that he was with Whittier at Salisbury Beach, in 




INTERIOR OF ROCKY HILL CHURCH 



the summer of 1861 
rage commemorated 
Beach:" — 



, when he saw the remarkable mi- 
in these lines in " The Tent on the 



" Sometimes, in calms of closing day, 
They watched the spectral mirage play; 
Saw low, far islands looming tall and nigh. 
And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the sky.' 



90 



WHITTIER-LAND 



Mr. Fletcher was spending several weeks that summer 
with his family in a tent on the beach. He says : " Here we 
were visited by friends from Newburyport and Amesbury. 
None were more welcome than Whittier and his sister, 
and two nieces, one of whom, Lizzie, as we called her, 
had the beautiful eyes — the grand features in both the 
poet and his sister. Those eyes of his sister Elizabeth 




MOUTH OF HAMPTON RIVER 

Scene of "The Wreck of Rivermouth ' 



are most touchingly alluded to by Whittier when he refers 
to his sister's childhood in the old Snow-bound home- 
stead : — 

" ' Lifting her large, sweet, asking eyes. 
Now bathed in the unfading green 
And holy peace of Paradise.' 

One day, late in the afternoon, I recall how Elizabeth was 
enjoying a cup of tea in the family tent, while Whittier 
and myself were seated upon a hillock of sand outside. 
It had been a peculiarly beautiful day, and as the sun 
began to decline, the calm sea was lit up wdth a dreamy 
grandeur wherein there seemed a mingling of rose-tint and 
color of pearls. All at once we noticed that the far-off 



AMESBURY 




SALISBURY BEACH, BEFORE THE COTTAGES WERE BUILT 
Scene of " The Tent on the Beach " 



Isles of Shoals, of which in clear days only the lighthouse 
could be seen, were lifted into the air, and the vessels 
out at sea were seen floating in the heavens. Whittier 
told me that he never before witnessed such a sight. We 
called to the friends in the tent to come and enjoy the 
scene with us. Elizabeth Whittier was then seeing from 
the shore the very island, reduplicated in the sky, where 
two years afterwards she met that fatal accident which, 
after months of suffering, terminated her existence." 



92 WHITTIER-LAND 

Elizabeth fell upon the rocks at Appledore in August, 
1863. It was not thought at the time that she was seri- 
ously injured, and perhaps Mr. Fletcher is wTong in at- 
tributing her death solely to this cause. For many years 
before and after the death of his sister, Mr. \Miittier spent 
some days each summer at Appledore. It was at his in- 
sistence that Celia Thaxter undertook her charming book, 
" Among the Isles of Shoals." 

Other ballads of this region are " The Changeling," 
and "The New Wife and the Old." The ancient house 
which is the scene of the last named poem is still stand- 
ing, and may be seen by passengers on the Boston and 
Maine road, near the Hampton station. It has a gambrel 




HAMPTON RIVER MARSHES 

roof, and is on the left when the train is going westward. 
On the right as the train passes Hampton Falls station 
may be seen in the distance, shaded by magnificent elms, 
the house of Miss Gove, in which Whittier died. It was 
upon these broad meadows and the distant line of the 
beach that his eyes rested, when he took his last look 



AMESBURY 



93 



upon the scenery he loved and has so faithfully pictured 
in his verse. The photographs here reproduced were taken 
by his grandnephew a few days before his death, and the 




HOUSE (3F MISS GOVE, HAMPTON FALES 

last time he stood on the balcony where his form appears. 
The room in which he died opens upon this balcony. It 
was his cousin, Joseph Cartland, who happened to stand 
by his left side when the picture was taken. This house 
is worthy of notice aside from its connection with Whit- 
tier, as one of the finest specimens of colonial architec- 
ture, its rooms filled with the furniture and heirlooms of 
the ancestors of the present proprietor. A trolley line 
from Amesbury now passes the house. 

/As a coincidence that was at the time considered sin- 
giiTarTthe superstition in regard to the matter of thirteen 
at table was recalled when Whittier dined for the last 
time with his friends. During the summer he had lodged 
at the house of Miss Gove, taking his meals with others 
of his party in a house adjoining. One evening all had 



94 



WHITTIER-LAND 



taken their places at the table except Mr. Whittier. His 
niece noticed there were twelve seated, and without com- 
ment took her plate to a small table in a corner of the 
room. When her uncle came in, he said in a cheery way, 
" Why, Lizzie, what has thee been doing, that they put 
thee in the corner ? " Some evasive reply was made, but 
probably Mr. Whittier guessed the reason, for he was 
well versed in such superstitions, and sometimes laugh- 
ingly heeded them. In a few minutes, Mr. Wakeman, 
the Baptist clergyman of the village, just returned from 




CHAMBER IN WHICH WHITTIER DIED 



his summer vacation, came in unexpectedly, and took the 
thirteenth seat that had just been vacated. Whittier's 
grandnephew, to again break the omen, took his plate 
over to the table in the corner with his mother. It was 
all done in a playful way, but the matter was recalled 
while we were at breakfast next morning. The news then 
came of the paralysis which had affected Mr. Whittier 
while dressing to join us. He never again came to the 
dining room. Another incident of the same evening was 
more impressive, and remains to this day inexplicable. 
[After sitting for a while in the parlor conversing with^ 



AMESBURY 95 

friends, he took his candle to retire, and as he said "Good- 
night" to his friends, and passed out of the door, an old 
clock (the clock over the desk) struck once ! It had not 
been wound up for years, and as no one present had ever 
before heard it strike, it excited surprise — the more so 
as the hands were not in position for striking. It was 
an incident that had a marked effect upon a party little 




AMESBURY PUBLIC LIBRARY 

inclined to heed omens ; and in many ways, without suc- 
cess, we tried to get the clock to strike once more. | 

A beautiful little lake in the northern part of Ames- 
bury, formerly known as Kimball's Pond, is the scene of 
-The Maids of Attitash." Its present name was con- 
ferred by Whittier because huckleberries abound in this 
region, and Attitash is the Indian name for this berry. 
His poem pictures the maidens with " baskets berry-filled, 

watching 

..." in idle mood 
The gleam knd shade of lake and wood." 

In a letter to the editor of '' The Atlantic '' ^-^^'^_^^ 
ballad, he says of Attitash : " It is as pretty as St. Mar> s 



96 WHITTIER-LAND |' 

Lake which Wordsworth sings, in fact a great deal pret- 
tier. The glimpse of the Pawtuckaway range of moun- 
tains in Nottingham seen across it is very fine, and it has 
noble groves of pines and maples and ash trees." A 
trolley line from Amesbury to Haverhill passes this lake ; 
but this is not the line which passes the Whittier birth- 
place. 

Annually, in the month of May, the Quarterly Meeting 
of the Society of Friends is held at Amesbury, and during 
the fifty-six years of Mr. Whittier's residence in the vil- 
lage, this was an occasion on which he kept open house, 
and wherever he happened to be, he came home to enjoy 
the company of friends, giving up all other engagements. 
He could not be detained in Boston or Danvers, or wher- 
ever else he might be, when the time for this meeting 
approached. It was an annual event in which his mother 
and sister took much interest, and after they passed away, 
the custom was maintained with the same spirit of hos- 
pitality with which they had invested it, to the last year 
of his life. 

[Among Mr. Whittier's neighbors was an aged pair, a 
brother and sister, wh^e simple, old-fashioned ways and 
quaint conversation he much enjoyed. He thought they 
^worked harder than they had need to do, as the infirmi- 
ties of age fell upon them, for they had accumulated a 
competency, and on one occasion he suggested that they 
leave for younger hands some of the labor to which they 
had been accustomed. But the sister said, " We must lay 
by something for our last sickness, and have enough left 
to bury us." Whittier replied, " Mary, did thee ever know 
any one in his last sickness to stick by the way for want 
of funds ? " The beautiful public library of Amesbury 
was built with the money of this aged pair, whose will was 
made at the suggestion of Whittierj Part of the money 
Whittier left to hospitals and sch^s would have been 
given to this library, had he not known that it was pro- 
vided for by his generous neighbors. 



AMESBURY 



97 



In his poem " The Common Question," Whittier re- 
fers to a saying of his pet parrot, " Charlie," a bird that 
afforded him much amusement, and sometimes annoyance, 
by his tricks and manners. His long residence in this 




WHITTIER AT THE AGE OF FORTY-NINE 



Quaker household had the effect to temper his vocabu- 
lary, and he almost forgot some phrases his ungodly cap- 
tors had taught him. But there would be occasional re- 
lapses. He had the freedom of the house, for Whittier 
objected to having him caged. One Sunday morning, 
when people were passing on the way to meeting, Charlie 
had p:ained access to the roof, and mounted one of the 



98 WHITTIER-LAND 

chimneys. There he stood, dancing and using language 
he unfortunately had not quite forgotten, to the amaze- 
ment of the church-goers ! Whatever Quaker discipline 
he received on this occasion did not cure him of the 
chimney habit, but some time later he was effectually 
cured ; for while dancing on this high perch he fell down 
one of the flues and was lost for some days. At last his 
stifled voice was heard in the parlor, in the wall over the 
mantel. A pole was let down the flue and he was rescued, 
but so sadly demoralized that he could only faintly 
whisper, " What does Charlie want ? " He died from the 
effect of this accident, but we will not dismiss him with- 
out another story in which he figures : He had the bad 
habit of nipping at the leg of a person whose trousers 
happened to be hitched above the top of the boot. One 
day Mr. Whittier was being worn out by a prosy harangue 
from a visitor who sat in a rocking-chair, and swayed 
back and forth as he talked. As he rocked, Whittier 
noticed that bis trousers were reaching the point of dan- 
ger, and now at length he had something that interested 
him. Charlie was sidling up unseen by the orator. There 
was a little nip followed by a sharp exclamation, and the 
thread of the discourse was broken ! The relieved poet 
now had the floor as an apologist for his discourteous 
parrot. 

At a time when Salmon P. Chase was in Lincoln's Cab- 
inet, but was beginning to think of the possibility of sup- 
planting him at the next presidential election, he visited 
Massachusetts, and called upon his old anti-slavery friend, 
Mr. Whittier. Chase told him among other things that 
he did not like Abraham Lincoln's stories. Whittier said, 
" But do they not always have an application, like the 
parables ? " " Oh, yes," said Chase, " but they are not 
decent like the parables ! " 

Hiram Collins was a village philosopher of Amesbury 
given to the discussion of high themes in a somewhat 
eccentric manner, and Whittier had a warm side for such 



I 



AMESBURY 



99 



odd characters. Once when Emerson was his guest, he 
invited Collins to meet him, knowing that the Concord 
philosopher would be amused if not otherwise interested 
in his Amesbury brother. Collins found him a good lis- 
tener, and gave him the full benefit of his theories and 
imaginings. Next morning Whittier called on Collins to 
inquire what he thought of Emerson. " Oh," said Collins, 
" I find your friend a very intelligent man. He has adopted 
some of my ideas." 

The likeness of Whittier on page 97 is from a daguerreo- 
type taken in October, 1856, and has never before been 




THE WOOD GIANT, AT STURTEV ANT'S, CENTRE HARBOR 

" Alone, the level sun before ; 

Below, the lake's green islands; 
Beyond, in misty distance dim, 
The rugged Northern Highlands." 

published in any volume written by or about the poet. 
Mr. Thomas E. Boutelle, the artist who took this daguerre- 
otype, is now living in Amesbury at the age of eighty- 
five. He tells me how he happened to get this picture, — 
a rather difficult feat, as it was hard to induce the poet to 
sit for his portrait. He had set up a daguerrean saloon in 
the little square near Whittier's house, and Whittier often 



L.o?c;. 



loo WHITTIER-LAND 

came in for a social chat, but persistently refused to give 
a sitting. One day he came in with his younger brother 
Franklin, whose picture he wanted. When it was finished, 
Franklin said, " Now, Greenleaf, I want your picture." 
After much persuasion Greenleaf consented, and Mr. 
Boutelle showed him the plate before it was fully devel- 
oped, with the remark that he thought he could do better 
if he might try again. By this bit of strategy he secured 
the extra daguerreotype here reproduced, but he took care 
not to show it in Amesbury, for fear Whittier would call 
it in. He took it to Exeter, N. H., and put it in a show- 
case at his door. His saloon was burned, and all he saved 
was this show-case and the daguerreotype, which many of 
the poet's old friends think to be his best likeness of that 
period. 

Several of Whittier's poems referring to New^ Hampshire 
scenery celebrate particular trees remarkable for age and 
size. For these giants of the primeval forest he ever had 
a loving admiration. The great elms that shade the house 
in which he died would no doubt have had tribute in verse 
if his life had been spared. He invited the attention of 
every visitor to them. The immense pine on the Sturte- 
vant farm, near Centre Harbor, called out a magnificent 
tribute in his poem "The Wood Giant." Our engraving 
on page 99 gives some idea of "the Anakim of pines." 
There is a grove at Lee, N. H., on the estate of his dearly- 
loved cousins, the Cartlands, to which he refers in his 
poem " A Memorial : " — 

" Green be thosfe hillside pines forever, 
And green the meadowy lowlands be, 
And green the old memorial beeches, 
Name-carven in the woods of Lee ! " 

There is a " Whittier Elm " at West Ossipee, and indeed 
wherever he chose a summer resort, some wood giant still 
bears his name. 

Visitors to Whittier-Land will find an excursion to Oak 



J 



I 



AMESBURY 



lOI 



Knoll, in Danvers, to be full of interest. Here the poet, 
after the marriage of his niece, spent a large part of each 
of the last fifteen years of his life in the family of his 
cousins, the Misses Johnson and Mrs. Woodman. With- 
out giving up his residence in Amesbury, where his house 
was always kept open for him during these years by Hon. 
George W. Gate, he found in the beautiful seclusion of 
the fine estate at Oak Knoll a restful and congenial home. 
Many souvenirs of the poet are here treasured, and the 
historical associations of the place are worthy of note. 
Here lived the Rev. George Burroughs, who suffered death 
as a w^izard more than two centuries ago. He was a man 




THE CARTLAND HOUSE, NEWBURYPORT 

Where Whittier spent the last winter of his life. A century ago the residence of 

the father of Harriet Livermore 

of immense strength of muscle, and his astonishing ath- 
letic feats were cited at his trial as evidence of his dealings 
with the Evil One. The well of his homestead is shown 
under the boughs of an immense elm, and the canopy now 
over it was the sounding-board of the pulpit of an ancient 



102 WHITTIER-LAND 

church of the parish so unenviably identified with the 
witchcraft delusion. 

Inquiries are sometimes made in regard to the places 
in Boston associated with the memory of Whittier. His 
first visit to the city was in his boyhood, when he came as 
the guest of Nathaniel Greene, a distant kinsman of his, 
who was editor of the *' Statesman " and postmaster of 
Boston. Many of his earliest poems were published in the 
" Statesman " under assumed names, and until lately never 
recognized as his. Not one of these juvenile productions, 
of which I have happened upon many specimens, was ever 
collected. When he was editing the "Manufacturer," he 
boarded with the publisher of that paper, Rev. Mr. Col- 
lier, at No. 30 Federal Street. When visiting Boston in 
middle life, he felt most at home in the old Marlboro 
Hotel on Washington Street. He would often leave the 
hotel for a morning walk, and find a hearty welcome at 
the breakfast hour from his dear friends, Mr. and Mrs. 
James T. Fields, at No. 148 Charles Street. In later life, 
at the home of Governor Claflin, at No. 63 Mount Vernon 
Street, he was frequently an honored guest. It was here 
he first met Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, who gives this ac- 
count of their meeting : '• On this morning he came in 
across the thick carpet with that nervous but soft step 
which every one who ever saw him remembers. Straight 
as his own pine tree, high of stature, and lofty of mien, 
he moved like a flash of light or thought. The first impres- 
sion which one received was of such eagerness to see 
his friends that his heart outran his feet. He seemed 
to suppose that he was receiving, not extending the bene- 
diction ; and he offered the delicate tribute to his friend 
of allowing him to perceive the sense of debt. It would 
have been the subtlest flattery, had he not been the most 
honest and straightforward of men. We talked — how can 
I say of what ? Or of what not ? We talked till our heads 
ached and our throats were sore ; and when we had fin- 
ished we began again. I remember being surprised at his 



AMESBURY 



103 



quick, almost boyish, sense of fun, and at the ease with 
which he rose from it into the atmosphere of the gravest, 
even the most solemn, discussion. He was a delightful 
converser, amusing, restful, stimulating, and inspiring 
at once." The winter of 1882-83 he spent at the Win- 
throp Hotel, on Bowdoin Street, where the Commonwealth 
Hotel now stands. 

^visit to Whittier-Land is incomplete it' Old Newbury 
an^Newburyport (originally one town) are left out of the 




WHIl'EFIELD'S CHURCH AND BIRTHPLACE OF GARRISON 



itinerarVj At the celebration of the two hundred and fif- 
tieth anniversary of the settlement of New^bury, in 1885, 
a letter from Whittier was read in which he recites some 
of the reasons for his interest in the town. He says : "Al- 
though I can hardly call myself a son of the ancient town, 
my grandmother, Sarah Greenleaf of blessed memory, was 
its daughter, and I may therefore claim to be its grandson. 
Its genial and learned historian, Joshua Coffin, was my 
first school-teacher, and all my life I have lived in sight 
of its green hills, and in hearing of its Sabbath bells. Its 



104 WHITTIER-LAND 

history and legends are familiar to me. . . . The town 
took no part in the witchcraft horror, and got none of 
its old women and town charges hanged for witches. 
' Goody ' Morse had the spirit rappings in her house two 
hundred years earlier than the Fox girls did, and some- 
what later a Newbury minister in wig and knee-buckles 
rode, Bible in hand, over to Hampton to lay a ghost who 
had materialized himself and was stamping up and down 
stairs in his military boots. . . . Whitefield set the example 
since followed by the Salvation Army, of preaching in its 
streets, and now lies buried under one of the churches with 
almost the honor of sainthood. William Lloyd Garrison 
was born in Newbury. The town must be regarded as 
the Alpha and Omega of the anti-slavery agitation." 

The grandmother to whom he refers was born in that 
part of the town nearest to his own birthplace. The out- 
let to Country Brook is nearly opposite the Greenleaf 
place, and Whittier's poem " The Home-Coming of the 
Bride " describes the crossing of the river and the bridal 
procession up the valley of the lesser stream, a part of 
which is known as Millvale because of the mills alluded 
to in the poem. 

(The house in which Garrison was born is on School 
Street next to the Old South meeting-house, in which 
Whitefield preached, and under the pulpit of which his 
bones are deposited. Whitefield died in the house next 
to Garrison's birthplace" ( The ancient Coffin house, built 
in 1645, ^^^^ home of JosTiua Coffin, to whom Whittier ad- 
dressed his poem " To My Old Schoolmaster," is on High 
Street, about half a mile below State Street. Whittier's 
cousins, Joseph and Gertrude Cartland, with whom he 
spent a large part of the last year of his life, lived at 
No. 244 High Street, at the corner of Broad. 






WHITTIER'S SENSE OF HUMOR 



I 



Ill 

WHITTIER'S SENSE OF HUMOR 

Few men of his day, of equal prominence, have been 
so greatly misunderstood as Whittier by the public which 
knows him only by the writings he allowed to be published. 
These reveal him on the one hand as an earnest reformer 
bitterly denouncing the sins of a guilty people, and on 
the other as a prophet of God, with a message of cheer 
to those who turn them from their evil ways. While 
slavery existed, he lashed the institution with a whip of 
scorpions, and in later years, in poems of exquisite sweet- 
ness, he sang of " The Eternal Goodness," and brought 
words of consolation and hope to despairing souls. In 
the popular mind there has been built up for him a repu- 
tation for extreme seriousness and even severity. To be 
sure, some of the poems in his collected works have witty 
and even merry lines, but they usually have a serious 
purpose. The real fun and frolic of his nature were 
known only to those privileged with his intimacy. He 
delighted at times in throwing off his mantle of prophecy, 
and unbending even to jollity, in his home life and among 
friends. The presence of a stranger was a check to such 
exuberance. And it was not from any unsocial habit that 
he fell into this restraint. It was because he found that 
the unguarded words of a public man are often given a 
weight they were not intended to bear. If he unbent as 
one might whose every word has not come to be thought 
of value, it led to misunderstandings. In his home and 
among near friends he revealed a charming readiness to 
engage in lively and frolicsome conversation. 



io8 WHITTIER-LAND 

Some stories illustrating his keen sense of humor, and 
specimens of verse written in rollicking vein for special 
occasions, which might not properly find place in a seri- 
ous attempt at biography, I have thought might be al- 
lowed in such an informal work as this. Few of the lines 
I shall here give have ever appeared in any of his col- 
lected works, and some of them were never before in 
print. I am sure I do no wrong to his memory in thus 
bringing out a phase of his character which could not be 
fully treated in biography. 

I never heard him laugh aloud, but a merrier face and 
an eye that twinkled with livelier glee when thoroughly 
amused are not often seen. He would double up with 
mirth without uttering a sound, — his chuckle being visi- 
ble instead of audible, — but this peculiar expression of 
jollity was irresistibly infectious. The faculty of seeing 
the humorous side of things he considered a blessing to 
be coveted, and he had a special pity for that class of 
philanthropists who cannot find a laugh in the midst of 
the miseries they would alleviate. A laugh rested him, 
and any teller of good stories, any writer of lively ad- 
ventures, received a hearty greeting from him. He told 
Dickens that his " Pickwick Papers " had for years been 
his remedy for insomnia, and Sam Weller had helped him 
to many an hour of rested nerves. He loved and admired 
Longfellow and Lowell, and they were his most cherished 
friends, but the lively wit of Holmes had a special charm 
for him, and jolly times they had w^henever they met. 
The witty talk and merry letters of Gail Hamilton, full 
as they were of a mad revelry of nonsense, were a great 
delight to him. It was not in praise of but in pity for 
Charles Sumner that he wrote : — 

" No sense of humor dropped its oil 

On the hard ways his purpose went ; 
Small play of fancy lightened toil ; 
He spake alone the thing he meant." 

As an illustration of his own way of speaking the thing 



WHITTIER'S SENSE OF HUMOR 109 

he did not mean, just for fun, take the following : More 
than thirty years ago, a Division of the Sons of Temper- 
ance was organized in Amesbury, and his niece, one of 
his household, joined it. Her turn came to edit a paper 
for the Division, and she asked her uncle to contribute 
something. He had often complained in a laughing way 
in reo-ard to the late hours of the club, and had threat- 
ened to lock her out. This accounts for the tone of the 
following remarkable contribution to temperance litera- 
ture from one of the oldest friends of the cause : — 

THE DIVISION 

" Dogs take it 1 Still the girls are out," 

Said Muggins, bedward groping, 
" 'T is twelve o'clock, or thereabout, 
And all the doors are open ! 
I '11 lock the doors another night, 

And give to none admission; 
Better to be abed and tight 
Than sober at Division ! " 

Next night at ten o'clock, or more 

Or less, by Muggins's guessing, 
He went to bolt the outside door, 

And lo 1 the key was missing. 
He muttered, scratched his head, and quick 

He came to this decision : 
" Here 's something new in 'rithmetic, 

Subtraction by Division I 

" And then," said he, " it puzzles me, 
I cannot get the right on 't, 
Why temperance talk and whiskey spree 

Alike should make a night on 't. 
D 'ye give it up ? " In Muggins's voice 
Was something like derision — 
" It 's just because between the boys 
And girls there 's no Division ! " 

Whittier's favorite way of enjoying his annual vacation 
among the mountains was to go with a party of his rela- 



no 



WHITTIER-LANI) 



tives and neighbors, and take possession of a little inn at 
West Ossipee, known as the " Bearcamp House." Sturte- 
vant's, at Centre Harbor, was another of his resorts. At 
these places his party filled nearly every room. It was 
made up largely of young people, full of frolic and love of 
adventure. The aged poet could not climb with them to 
the tops of the mountains ; but he watched their going and 







BEARCAMP HOUSE, WEST OSSIPEE, N. H. 



coming with lively interest, and of an evening listened to 
their reports and laughed over the effervescence of their 
enthusiasm. Two young farmers of West Ossipee, brothers 
named Knox, acted as guides to Chocorua. They had 
some success as bear hunters, and supplied the inn with 



WHITTIER'S SENSE OF HUMOR in 

bear steaks. One day in September, 1876, the Knox 
brothers took a party of seven of Whittier's friends to the 
top of Chocorua, where they camped for the night among 
the traps that had been set for the bears. They heard the 
o-rowling of the bears in the night, so the young ladies 
reported, with other blood-curdling incidents. Soon after 
the Knox brothers gave a husking at their barn,' and the 
whole Bearcamp party was invited. Whittier wrote a poem 
for the occasion, and induced Lucy Larcom to read it for 
him as from an unknown author, although he sat among 
the buskers. It was entitled : — 

HOW THEY CLIMBED CHOCORUA 

Unto gallant deeds belong 
Poet's rhyme and singer's song ; 
Nor for lack of pen or tongue 
Should their praises be unsung, 

"Who climbed Chocorua ! 

O full long shall they remember 
That wild nightfall of September, 
When aweary of their tramp 
They set up their canvas camp 

In the hemlocks of Chocorua. 

There the mountain winds were howHng, 
There the mountain bears were prowhng. 
And through rain showers falhng drizzly 
Glared upon them, grim and grisly. 

The ghost of old Chocorua ! 

On the rocks with night mist wetted, 
Keen his scalping knife he whetted. 
For the ruddy firelight dancing 
On the brown locks of Miss Lansing, 
Tempted old Chocoraa. 

1 The house of these brothers and the barn in which the husking 
was held may be seen near the West Ossipee station of the Boston 
and Maine Railroad. The Bearcamp House was burned many years 
ago, and never rebuilt. 



112 WHITTIER-LAND 

But he swore — (if ghosts can swear) — 
" No, I cannot Hft the hair 
Of that pale face, tall and fair, 
And for her sake, I will spare 

The sleepers on Chocorua." 

Up they rose at blush of dawning, 
Off they marched in gray of morning, 
P^ollowing where the brothers Knox 
Went like wild goats up the rocks 
Of vast Chocorua. 

Where the mountain shadow bald fell. 
Merry faced went Addie Caldwell ; 
And Miss Ford, as gay of manner, 
As if thrumming her piano, 

Sang along Chocorua. 

Light of foot, of kirtle scant, 
Tripped brave Miss Sturtevant ; 
While as free as Sherman's bummer, 
In the rations foraged Plummer, ^ 

On thy slope, Chocorua ! 

Panting, straining up the rock ridge, 
How they followed Tip and Stockbridge, 
Till at last, all sore with braises, 
Up they stood like the nine Muses, 
On thy crown, Chocorua ! 

At their shout, so wild and rousing. 
Every dun deer stopped his browsing. 
And the black bear's small eyes glistened, 
As with watery mouth he listened 

To the climbers on Chocorua. 

All the heavens were close above them. 
But below were friends w'ho loved them, — 
And at thought of Bearcamp's worry, 
Down they clambered in a hurry, — 
Scun-y down Chocorua. 

Sore we miss the steaks and bear roast — 
But withal for friends we care most ; — 



114 WHITTIER-LAND 

Give the brothers Knox three cheers, 
Who to bring us back our dears. 

Left bears on old Chocorua ! 

The next day after the husking, Lucy Larcom and some 
others of the party prepared a burlesque literary exercise 
for the evening at the inn. She wrote a frolicsome poem, 
and others devised telegrams, etc., all of which were to 
surprise Whittier, who was to know nothing of the affair 
until it came off. When the evening came, the venerable 
poet took his usual place next the tongs, and the rest of 
the party formed a semicircle around the great fireplace. 
On such occasions Whittier always insisted on taking 
charge of the fire, as he did in his own home. He 
even took upon himself the duty of filling the wood-box. 
No one in his presence dared to touch the tongs. By and 
by telegrams began to be brought in by the landlord from 
ridiculous people in ridiculous situations. Some purported 
to come from an old poet who had the misfortune to be 
caught by his coat-tails in one of the Knox bear-traps on 
Chocorua. It was suggested that he might be the author 
of the poem read at the husking. Lucy Larcom, who, by 
the way, was another of the writers popularly supposed to 
be very serious minded, but who really was known among 
her friends as full of fun, read a poem addressed to the 
man in the bear-trap, entitled : — 



TO THE UNKNOWN AND ABSENT AUTHOR OF 
"HOW THEY CLIMBED CHOCORUA" 

O man in the trap, O thou poet-man ! 

What on airth are you doin' ? — 
We haste to the husking as fast as we can, 

— But where 's Mr. Bruin ? 

We listen, we wait for his sweet howl in vain. 

Like the far storm resounding. 
Brothers Knox ne'er will see Mr. Bruin again, 

Through the dim moonlight bounding. 



WHITTIER'S SENSE OF HUiMOR 115 

For, thou man in the trap, O thou poet-y-man, 

Scared to flight by thy singing. 
Away through the mountainous forest he ran, 

Like a huiTicane winging. 

Aye, the bear fled away, and his traps left behind, 

For the use of the poet ; 
If an echo unearthly is borne on the wind — 

'T is the man's — you may know it 

By its tones of dismay, melancholy and loss, 

O'er his coat-tails' sad ruin ; 
There 's a moan in the pine, and a howl o'er the moss — 

But it 's he — 't is n't Bruin ! 

And the fire you see on the cliff in the air^ 

Is his eye-balls a-glarin' ! 
And the form that you call old Chocorua there 

Is the poet up-rarin' ! 

And whenever the trees on the mountain-tops thrill 
And the fierce winds they blow 'em. 

In most awful pause every bear shall stand still — 
He 's writing a poem ! 

Whittier evidently enjoyed the fun, and after the rest had 
had their say, he remarked, " That old fellow in the bear- 
trap must be in extremis. He ought to make his will. 
Suppose we help him out ! " He asked one of us to get 
pencil and paper and jot down the items of the will, each 
to make suggestions. It ended, of course, in his making 
the whole will himself, and doing it in verse. It is per- 
haps the only poem of his which he never wrote with 
his own hand. It came as rapidly as the scribe could take 
it. Every one at that fireside vi^as remembered in this 
queer will — even the " boots " of the inn, the stage-driver, 
and others who were looking upon the sport from the 
doorway. 
1 There was a forest fire on a shoulder of Chocorua at this time. 



i6 WHITTIER-LAND 

THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF THE MAN 
IN THE BEAR-TRAP 

Here I am at last a goner, 
Held in hungry jaws like Jonah ; 

What the trap has left of me 

Eaten by the bears will be. 
So I make, on duty bent. 
My last will and testament, 

Giving to my Bearcamp friends 

All my traps and odds and ends. 
First, on Mr. Whittier, 
That old bedstead I confer, 

Whereupon, to vex his life, 

Adam dreamed himself a wife. 
I give Miss Ford the copyright 
Of these verses I indite. 

To be sung, when I am gone, 

To the tune the cow died on. 
On Miss Lansing I bestow 
Tall Diana's hunting bow ; 

Where it is I cannot tell — 

But if found 't will suit her well. 
I bequeath to Mary Bailey 
Yarn to knit a stocking daily.i 

To Lizzie Pickard from my hat 

A ribbon for her yellow cat. 
And I give to Mr. Pickard 
That old tallow dip that flickered. 

Flowed and sputtered more or less 

Over Franklin's printing press. 
I give Belle Hume a wing 
Of the bird that would n't sing ; - 

To Jettie for her dancing nights 

Slippers dropped from Northern Lights. 
And I give my very best 
Beaver stove-pipe to Celeste — 

Solely for her husband's wear. 

On the day they 're made a pair. 
If a tear for me is shed, 
And Miss Larcom's eyes are red — 

1 She was knitting at the time. 

2 She had refused to sing that evening. 



WHITTIER'S SENSE OF HUMOR 117 

Give her for her prompt relief 

My last pocket-handkerchief ! 1 
My cottage at the Shoals I give 
To all who at the Bearcamp live — 

Provided that a steamer plays 

Down that river in dog-days — 
Linking daily heated highlands 
With the cool sea-scented islands — 

With Tip her engineer, her skipper 

Peter Hines, the old stage-whipper.- 
To Addie Caldwell, who has mended 
My torn coat, and trousers rended, 

I bequeath, in lack of payment, 

All that 's left me of my raiment. 
Having naught beside to spare, 
To my good friend, Mrs. Ayer, 

And to Mrs. Sturtevant, 

My last lock of hair I grant. 
I make Mr. Currier ^ 
Of this will executor ; 

And I leave the debts to be 

Reckoned as his legal fee. 

This is all of the will that was written that evening ; but 
the next morning, at breakfast, I found under my plate a 
note-sheet, with some penciling on it. As I opened it, Mr. 
Whittier, with a quizzical look, said, "Thee will notice 
that the bear-trap man has added a codicil to his will." 
This is the codicil : — 

And this pencil of a sick bard 
I bequeath to Mr. Pickard ; 

Pledging him to write a very 

Long and full obituary — 
Showing by my sad example, 
Useful life and virtues ample. 

Wit and wisdom only tend 

To bear-traps at one's latter end ! 

1 Lucy Larcom was then suffering from hay fever. 

2 The papers had an item to the effect that some one had given 
Whittier a cottage at the Isles of Shoals. 

^ The only lawyer present. 



ii8 WHITTIER-LAND 

I had to go back to my editorial desk in Portland that 
day, and immediately received there this note from Mr. 
Whittier : — 

" Dear Mr, P., — Don't print in thy paper my foolish 
verses, which thee copied. They are hardly consistent 
with my years and ' eminent gravity,' and would make 
' the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things.' " 

I had no thought at the time of giving to the public this 
jolly side of Whittier's character, but do it now with little 
misgiving, as it is realized by every one that "a little 
nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men." 
Whittier's capacity for serious work is well known, and 
his love of play never interfered with it. An earnest man 
without a sense of humor is a machine without a lul^ri- 
cant, worn out before its work is done. There can be no 
doubt that Whittier owed his length of days to his happy 
temperament. 

Here is a story of Whittier told by Alice Freeman 
Palmer : One evening they sat in Governor Claflin's 
library, in Boston, and he was taking his rest telling 
ghost stories. Mrs. Claflin had given strict orders that 
no visitor be allowed to intrude on Mr. Whittier when 
he was resting. Suddenly, at the crisis of a particularly 
interesting story, there was a commotion in the hall, and 
the rest of that story was not told. A lady had called to 
see the poet, and would not be denied. The domestic 
could not stop her, and she came straight into the library. 
She walked up to Whittier and seized both his hands, 
saying, " Mr. Whittier, this is the supreme moment of 
my life ! " The poor man in his distress blushed like a 
school-girl, and shifted from one foot to the other ; he 
managed to get his hands free, and put them behind him 
for further security. And what do you think he said .? 
All he said was, " Is it ? " Miss Freeman thought a third 
party in the way, and slipped out. As she was going up- 
stairs, she heard a quick step behind her, and Whittier 
took her by the shoulder and shook her, saying as if an- 



! 



I 



WHITTIER'S SENSE OF HUMOR 119 

gry, " Alice Freeman, I believe thee has been laughing 
at me ! " She could not deny it. " What would thee do, 
Alice Freeman, if a man thee never saw should come up 
in that way to thee, take both hands, and tell thee it was 
the supreme moment of his life ? " 

Probably the most seriously dangerous position in 
which he was ever placed was on the occasion of the loot- 
ing and burning^ of Pennsylvania Hall, in the spring of 
1838. His editorial office was in the building, and for 
two or three days the mob had been threatening its de- 
struction before they accomplished it. It was not safe for 
him to go into the street except in disguise. And yet it 
was at this very time that he wro.te the following humor- 
ous skit, never before in print. Theodore D. Weld had 
the year before made a contract of perpetual bachelor- 
hood with Whittier, and yet he chose this troublous time 
to marry the eloquent South Carolina Quakeress, Ange- 
lina Grimke, who had freed her slaves and come North 
to rouse the people, and was creating a sensation on the 
lecture platform. Her burning words in Pennsylvania 
Hall had helped to make the mob furious. Whittier's 
humorous arraignment of his friend for breaking his pro- 
mise of celibacy was written at this critical time, and 
he was obliged to disguise himself when he carried his 
epithalamium on the wedding night to the door of the 
bridegroom. He had been invited to assist at the wed- 
ding service, but as the bride was marrying " out of soci- 
ety," Whittier's orthodoxy compelled him to decline the 
invitation. 

" Alack and alas ! that a brother of mine, 

A bachelor sworn on celibacy's altar, 
Should leave me to watch by the desolate shrine, 

And stoop his own neck to the enemy's halter! 
Oh the treason of Benedict Arnold was better 

Than the scoffing at Love, and then sub rosa wooing ; 
This mocking at Beauty, yet wearing her fetter — 

Alack and alas for such bachelor doing! 



120 WHITTIER-LAND 

" Oh the weapons of Saul are the PhiUstine's prey ! 

Who shall stand when the heart of the champion fails him 
Who strive when the mighty his shield casts away, 

And yields up his post when a woman assails him ? 
Alone and despairing thy brother remains 

At the desolate shrine where we stood up together, 
Half tempted to envy thy self-imposed chains, 

And stoop his own neck for the noose of the tether! 

" So firm and yet false ! Thou mind'st me in sooth 
Of St. Anthony's fall when the spirit of evil i 



r 



Filled the cell of his rest with imp, dragon and devil ; 
But the Saint never lifted his eyes from the Book 

Till the tempter appeared in the guise of a woman; 
And her voice was so sweet that he ventured one look, 

And the devil rejoiced that the Saint had proved human ! " , 



In 1874, Gail Hamilton's niece was married at her 
house in Hamilton, and she sent a grotesque invitation 
to Whittier, asking him to come to her wedding, and pre- 
scribing a ridiculous costume he might wear. As a post- 
script she mentioned that it was her niece who was to be 
married. Whittier sent this reply, pretending not to have 
noticed the postscript, but finally waking up to the fact 
that she was not herself to be the bride : — 

Amesbury, 1 2th mo. 29th, 1874. 

GAIL HAMILTON'S WEDDING 

" Come to my wedding," the missive runs, 
" Come hither and list to the holy vows ; 
If you miss this chance you will wait full long 
To see another at Gail-a House ! " 

Her wedding ! What can the woman expect ? 
Does she think her friends can be jolly and glad? 

1 A line is here missing. I had the copy of this poem from Mr. 
Weld himself when he was ninety years of age. He had accidentally 
omitted it in copying for me, and his death occurred before the 
omission was noticed. 



WHITTIER'S SENSE OF HUMOR i2i 

Is it only the child who sighs and grieves 
For the loss of something he never had ? 



Yet I say to myself, Is it strange that she 
Should choose the way that we know is good 

What right have we to grumble and whine 
In a pitiful dog-in-the-manger mood ? 

What boots it to maunder with " if " and " perhaps," 
And " it might have been " when we know it could n't, 

If she had been willing (a vain surmise), 
It 's ten to one that Barkis would n't. 

'Twas pleasant to think (if it was a dream) 
That our loving homage her need supplied. 

Humbler and sadder, if wiser, we walk 
To feel her life from our own lives glide. 

Let her go, God bless her ! I fling for luck 
My old shoe after her. Stay, what 's this ? 

Is it all a mistake ? The letter reads, 

" My niece, you must know% is the happy miss." 

All 's right ! To grind out a song of cheer 

I set to the crank my ancient muse. 
Will somebody kiss that bride for me ? 

I fling with my blessing, both boots and shoes ! 

To the lucky bridegroom I cry all hail ! 

He is sure of having, let come what may. 
The sage advice of the wisest aunt 

That ever her fair charge gave away. 

The Hamilton bell, if bell there be, 

Methinks is ringing its merriest peal ; 
And, shade? of John Calvin ! I seem to see 

The hostess treading the wedding reel ! 

The years are many, the years are long. 
My dreams are over, my songs are sung, 

But, out of a heart that has not grown cold, 
I bid God-speed to the fair and young. 



122 WHITTIER-LAND 

All joy go with them from year to year; 

Never by me shall their pledge be blamed 
Of the perfect love that has cast out fear, 

And the beautiful hope that is not ashamed ! 

An aged Quaker friend from England, himself a bache- 
lor, was once visiting Mr. VVhittier, and was shown to his 
room by the poet, when the hour for retiring came. 
Soon after, he was heard calling to his host in an excited 
tone, " Thee has made a mistake, friend Whittier ; there 
are female garments in my room ! " Whittier replied 
soothingly, "Thee had better go to bed, Josiah; the 
female garments won't hurt thee." 

Here is a specimen of his frolicsome verse written after 
he was eighty years of age. It deals largely in personali- 
ties, was meant solely for the perusal of a few friends whom 
it pleasantly satirized, and was never before in print. When 
the bronze statue of Josiah Bartlett was to be erected in 
Amesbury, Whittier of course was called upon for the 
dedicatory ode, and he wrote " One of the Signers " for 
the occasion. The unveiling of the statue occurred on 
the Fourth of July, 1888, and as might have been antici- 
pated, the poet could not be prevailed upon to be present. 
The day before the Fourth he went to Oak Knoll, " so as 
to keep in the quiet," he said. But his thoughts were on 
the celebration going on at Amesbury, and they took the 
form of drollery. He imagined himself occupying the seat 
on the platform which had been reserved for him, and 
these amusing verses were composed, the satirical allu- 
sions in which would be appreciated by his townspeople. 
The president of the day was Hon. E. Moody Boynton, a 
descendant of the signer, and the well-known inventor of 
the bicycle railway, the " lightning saw," etc. He has the 
reputation of having the limberest tongue in New Eng- 
land, as well as a brain most fertile in invention. The 
orator of the day was Hon. Robert T. Davis, then mem- 
ber of Congress, a former resident of Amesbury, and like 
Bartlett a physician. Jacob R. Huntington, to whose lib- 



WHITTIER'S SENSE OF HUMOR 123 

erality the village is indebted for the statue, is a success- 
ful pioneer in the carriage-building industry of the place. 
It was cannily decided to give the statue to the State of 
Massachusetts, so as to have an inducement for the Gov- 
ernor to attend the dedication. Whittier's play on this fact 
is in the best vein of his drollery. The statue is of dark 
bronze, and this gave a chance for his amusing reference 
to the Kingston Democrats, whom he imagined as coming 
across the state line to attend the celebration. Dr. Bart- 
lett was buried in their town. Professor J. W. Churchill, 
of Andover, one of the " heretics " of the Seminary, was 
to read the poem. The other persons named were eccen- 
tric characters well known in Amesbury : — 

MY DOUBLE 

I 'm in Amesbury, not at Oak Knoll ; 

'T is my double here you see : 
/';;/ sitting on the platform, 

Where the programme places me — 

Where the women nudge each other, 
And point me out and say : 
" That 's the man who makes the verses — 
My ! how old he is and gray ! " 

I hear the crackers popping, 

I hear the bass drums throb ; 
I sit at Boynton's right hand, 

And help him boss the job. 

And like the great stone giant 

Dug out of Cardiff mire, 
We lift our man of metal, 

And resurrect Josiah ! 

Around, the Hampshire Democrats 
Stand looking glum and grim, — 
" That thing the Kingston doctor ! 
Do you call that critter him ? 



124 WHITTIER-LAND 

'• The pesky Black Republicans 

Have gone and changed his figure ; 
We buried him a white man — 
They 've dug him up a nigger ! " 

I hear the wild winds rushing 

From Boynton's limber jaws, 
Swift as his railroad bicycle, 

And buzzing like his saws ! 

But Hiram the wise is explaining 

It 's only an old oration 
Of Ginger-Pop Emmons, come down 

By way of undulation ! 

Then Jacob, the vehicle-maker, 

Comes forward to inquire 
If Governor Ames will relieve the town 

Of the care of old Josiah. 

And the Governor says : " If Amesbury can't 

Take care of its own town charge. 
The State, I suppose, must do it. 

And keep him from runnin' at large ! " 

Then rises the orator Robert, 

Recounting with grave precision 
The tale of the great Declaration, 

And the claims of his brother physician. 

Both doctors, and both Congressmen, 

Tall and straight, you 'd scarce know which is 

The live man, and which is the image, 
Except by their trousers and breeches ! 

Then when the Andover "heretic " 

Reads the rhymes I dared not utter, 
I fancy Josiah is scowling, • ! 

And his bronze lips seem to mutter : ^ ' 

} ! 

" Dry up ! and stop your nonsense ! I 

The Lord who in His mercies . 

Once saved me from the Tories, 
Preserve me now from verses I " 



WHITTIER'S SENSE OF HUMOR 125 

Bad taste in the old Continental ! 

Whose knowledge of verse was at best 
John Rogers' farewell to his wife and 

Nine children and one at the breast ! 

He 's treating me worse than the Hessians 
He shot in the Bennington scrimmage — 

Have I outlived the newspaper critic, 
To be scalped by a graven image ! 

Perhaps, after all, I deserve it. 

Since I, who was born a Quaker, 
Sit here an image worshiper, 

Instead of an image breaker ! 

In giving this picture of a poet at play, I have presented 
a side of Whittier's character heretofore overlooked, al- 
though to his intimate friends it was ever in evidence. I 
think there are few of the lovers of his verse who, if they 
are surprised by these revelations, will not also be pleased 
to become acquainted with one of his methods of recrea- 
tion. 



.A 



WHITTIER'S UNCOLLECTED 
POEMS 



■i 



IV 

WHITTIER'S UNCOLLECTED POEMS 

Between the years 1826 and 1835, Mr. Whittier was 
writing literally hundreds of poems which he never per- 
mitted to be collected in any edition of his works ; and 
not only so, but he preserved no copies of them, in later 
years destroying such as came to his notice. Some of 
these verses went the rounds of the newspaper press of 
the country, giving him a widespread reputation as a poet. 
But in much of his early work we see traces of ambition 
for fame, and a feeling that the world was treating him 
harshly. When the change came over his spirit to which 
reference has been made in a preceding chapter, sweet- 
ening all the springs of life, he lost interest in these early 
productions, some of which were giving him the fame 
that in his earlier years he so much craved. It was this 
radical change which no doubt influenced him in his 
later life to omit from his collected works most of the 
verses written previous to it. I have in my possession 
more than three hundred poems which I have found in 
the files of old newspapers, the great mass of which I 
would by no means reproduce, although I find nothing of 
which a young writer of that period need be ashamed. A 
few of these verses are given below as specimens of the 
work he saw fit to discard. 

The following poem, written when he was nineteen 
years of age, during his first term in the Haverhill Acad- 
emy, shows in one or two stanzas the feeling that the 
world is giving him the cold shoulder : — 



I30 WHITTIER-LAND 

I WOULD NOT LOSE THAT ROMANCE WILD 

I would not lose that romance wild, 

That high and gifted feeling — 
The power that made me fancy's child, 

The clime of song revealing, 
For all the power, for all the gold. 
That slaves to pride and avarice hold. 

I know that there are those who deem 

But lightly of the lyre ; — 
Who ne'er have felt one blissful beam 

Of song-enkindled fire 
Steal o'er their spirits, as the light 
Of morning o'er the face of night. 

Yet there 's a mystery in song — 

A halo round the way 
Of him who seeks the muses' throng — 

An intellectual ray, 
A source of pure, unfading joy — 
A dream that earth can ne'er destroy. 

And though the critic's scornful eye 

Condemn his faltering lay, 
And though with heartless apathy, 

The cold world turn away — 
And envy strive with secret aim, 
To blast and dim his rising fame ; 

Yet fresh, amid the blast that brings 

Such poison on its breath, 
Above the wreck of meaner things. 

His lyre's unfading wreath 
Shall bloom, when those who scorned his lay, 
With name and power have passed away. 

Come then, my lyre, although there be 

No witchery in thy tone ; 
And though the lofty harmony 

Which other bards have known. 
Is not, and cannot e'er be mine, 
To touch w'ith power those chords of thine. 



WHITTIER'S UNCOLLECTED POEMS 131 

Yet thou canst tell, in humble strain, 

The feelings of a heart, 
Which, though not proud, would still disdain 

To bear a meaner part, 
Than that of bending at the shrine 
Where their bright wreaths the muses twine. 

Thou canst not give me wealth or fame ; 

Thou hast no power to shed 
The halo of a deathless name 

Around my last cold bed ; 
To other chords than thine belong 
The breathings of immortal song. 

Yet come, my lyre ! some hearts may beat 

Responsive to thy lay ; 
The tide of sympathy may meet 

Thy master's lonely way ; 
And kindred souls from envy free 
May listen to its minstrelsy. 
Sth month, 1827. 

During the first months of Whittier's editorship of the 
** New England Review" at Hartford, his contributions of 
verse to that paper were numerous — in some cases three 
of his poems appearing in a single number, as in the 
issue of October i8, 1830. Two of these are signed with 
his initials, but the one here given has no signature. 
That it is his is made evident by the fact that all but one 
stanza of it appears in " Moll Pitcher," published two 
years later. It was probably because of the self-assertion 
of the concluding lines that the omitted stanza was can- 
celed, and these lines reveal the ambition then stirring 
his young blood. 

NEW ENGLAND 

Land of the forest and the rock — 

Of dark blue lake and mighty river — 
Of mountains reared aloft to mock 
The storm's career — the lightning's shock, — 
My own green land forever ! — 



132 WHITTIER-LAND 

Land of the beautiful and brave — 

The freeman's home — the martyr's grave — 

The nursery of giant men, 

Whose deeds have linked with every glen, 

And every hill and every stream, 

The romance of some warrior dream ! — 

Oh never may a son of thine, 

Where'er his wandering steps incline, 

Forget the sky which bent above 

His childhood like a dream of love — 

The stream beneath the green hill flowing — 

The broad-armed trees above it growing — 

The clear breeze through the foliage blowing ; — 

Or hear unmoved the taunt of scorn 

Breathed o'er the brave New England born ; — 

Or mark the stranger's Jaguar hand 

Disturb the ashes of thy dead — 
The buried glory of a land 

Whose soil with noble blood is red. 
And sanctified in every part, 
Nor feel resentment like a brand 
Unsheathing from his fiery heart ! 

Oh — greener hills may catch the sun 

Beneath the glorious heaven of France ; 
And streams rejoicing as they run 

Like life beneath the day-beam's glance, 
May wander where the orange bough 
With golden fruit is bending low ; — 
And there may bend a brighter sky 
O'er green and classic Italy — 
And pillared fane and ancient grave 

Bear record of another time. 
And over shaft and architrave 

The green luxuriant ivy climb ; — 
And far towards the rising sun 

The palm may shake its leaves on high, 
Where flowers are opening one by one. 

Like stars upon the twilight sky, 
And breezes soft as sighs of love 

Above the rich mimosa stray. 
And through the Brahmin's sacred grove 

A thousand bright-hued pinions play ! — 



WHITTIER'S UNCOLLECTED POEMS 133 

Yet, unto thee, New England, still 

Thy wandering sons shall stretch their arms, 
And thy rude chart of rock and hill 

Seem dearer than the land of palms I 
Thy massy oak and mountain pine 

More welcome than the banyan's shade, 
And every free, blue stream of thine 

Seem richer than the golden bed 
Of Oriental waves, which glow 
And sparkle with the wealth below I 

Land of my fathers ! — if my name, 
Now humble, and unwed to fame, 
Hereafter burn upon the lip, 

As one of those which may not die, 
Linked in eternal fellowship 

With visions pure and strong and high — 
If the wild dreams which quicken now 
The throbbing pulse of heart and brow. 
Hereafter take a real form 
Like spectres changed to beings warm ; 
And over temples worn and gray 

The star-like crown of glory shine, — 
Thine be the bard's undying lay, 

The murmur of his praise be thine I 

One of the poems in the same number which contained 
this spirited tribute to New England was the song given 
below, which was signed with the initials of the editor, 
else there might be some hesitation in assigning it to him, 
for there is scarcely anything like it to be found in his 
writings. It was evidently written for music, and some 
composer should undertake it. 

SONG 

That vow of thine was full and deep 

As man has ever spoken — 
A vow within the heart to keep. 

Unchangeable, unbroken, 

'T was by the glory of the Sun, 
And by the light of Even, 



134 WHITTIER-LAND 

And by the Stars, that, one by one, 
Are lighted up in Heaven 1 

That Even might forget its gold — 
And Sunlight fade forever — 

The constant Stars grow dim and cold, - 
But thy affection — never ! 

And Earth might wear a changeful sign, 
And fickleness the Sky — 

Yet, even then, that love of thine 
Might never change nor die. 

The golden Sun is shining yet — 

And at the fall of Even 
There 's beauty in the warm Sunset, 

And Stars are bright in Heaven. 

No change is on the blessed Sky — 
The quiet Earth has none — 

Nature has still her constancy. 
And Thou art changed alone ! 



The "Revievi^" for September 13, 1830, has a poem 
of Whittier's prefaced by a curious story about Lord 
Byron : — 

The Spectre. — There is a story going the rounds of our 
periodicals that a Miss G., of respectable family, young 
and very beautiful, attended Lord Byron for nearly a year 
in the habit of a page. Love, desperate and all-engrossing, 
seems to have been the cause of her singular conduct. 
Neglected at last by the man for whom she had forsaken 
all that woman holds dear, she resolved upon self-de- 
struction, and provided herself with poison. Her designs 
were discovered by Lord Byron, who changed the poison 
for a sleeping potion. Miss G., w^ith that delicate feeling 
of affection which had ever distinguished her intercourse 
with Byron, stole privately away to the funeral vault of 
the Byrons, and fastened the entrance, resolving to spare 



WHITTIER'S UNCOLLECTED POEMS 135 

her lover the dreadful knowledge of her fate. She there 
swallowed the supposed poison — and probably died of 
starvation ! She was found dead soon after. Lord Byron 
never adverted to this subject without a thrill of horror. 
The following from his private journal may, perhaps, have 
some connection with it : — 

" I awoke from a dream — well ! and have not others 
dreamed ? — such a dream ! I wish the dead would rest 
forever. Ugh ! how my blood chilled — and I could not 
wake — and — and — 

" Shadows to-night 
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard 
Than could the substance of ten thousand — 
Armed all in proof — 

" I do not like this dream — I hate its foregone conclu- 
sion. And am I to be shaken by shadows ? Ay, when 
they remind us of — no matter — but if I dream again I 
will try whether all sleep has the like visions." — Moore's 
" Byron," page 324. 

She came to me last night — 
The floor gave back no tread, 
She stood by me in the wan moonlight — 
In the white robes of the dead — 
Pale — pale, and very mournfully 
She bent her light form over me — 
I heard no sound — I felt no breath 
Breathe o'er me from that face of death ; 
Its dark eyes rested on my own, 
Rayless and cold as eyes of stone ; 
Yet in their fixed, unchanging gaze, 
Something which told of other days — 
A sadness in their quiet glare, 
As if Love's smile. were frozen there, 
Came o'er me with an icy thrill — 
O God ! I feel its presence still ! 
And fearfully and dimly 
The pale cold vision passed, 
Yet those dark eyes were fixed on me 
In sadness to the last. 



136 WHITTIER-LAND 

I struggled — and my breath came back, 
As to the victim on the rack, 
Amid the pause of mortal pain 
Life steals to suffer once again ! 
Was it a dream ? I looked around, 
The moonlight through the lattice shone ; 
The same pale glow that dimly crowned 
The forehead of the spectral one I 
And then I knew she had been there — 
Not in her breathing loveliness, 
But as the grave's lone sleepers are, 
Silent and cold and passionless ! 
A weary thought — a fearful thought — 
Within the secret heart to keep : 
Would that the past might be forgot — 
Would that the dead might sleep ! 

These are the concluding lines of a long poem written in 
1829, while he was editing the "American Manufacturer." 
The poem as a whole was never in print ; but these lines of 
it I find in the " Essex Gazette " of August 22, 1829, from 
which paper they were copied, as were most of his produc- 
tions of that period, by the newspapers of the country. 
They were never in any collection of his works : — 

A FRAGMENT 

Lady, farewell ! I know thy heart 

Has angel strength to soar above 

The cold reserve — the studied art 

That mock the glowing wings of love. 

Its thoughts are purer than the pearl 

That slumbers where the wave is driven, 

Yet freer than the winds that furl 

The banners of the clouded heaven. 

And thou hast been the brightest star 

That shone along my weary way — 

Brighter than rainbow visions are, 

A changeless and enduring ray. 

Nor will my memory lightly fade 

From thy pure dreams, high-thoughted girl ; — 

The ocean may forget what made 

Its blue expanse of waters curl. 



WHITTIER'S UNCOLLECTED POEMS 137 

"When the strong winds have passed the sky ; 

Earth in its beauty may forget 

The recent cloud that floated by ; 

The glories of the last sunset — 

But not from thy unchanging mind 

Will fade the dreams of other years, 

And love will linger far behind, 

In memory's resting place of tears I 

Many of Whittier's early discarded verses are of a 
rather gruesome sort, but more are inspired by contempla- 
tion of sublime themes, like this apostrophe to "Eternity," 
which was published in the *' New England Review " in 
1831: — 

ETERNITY 

Boundless eternity ! the winged sands 

That mark the silent lapse of flitting time 
Are not for thee; thine awful empire stands 

From age to age, unchangeable, sublime ; 

Thy domes are spread where thought can never climb, 
In clouds and darkness where vast pillars rest. 

I may not fathom thee : 't would seem a crime 
Thy being of its mystery to divest 
Or boldly lift thine awful veil with hands unblest. 

Thy ruins are the wrecks of systems ; suns 

Blaze a brief space of age, and are not ; 
Worlds crumble and decay, creation runs 

To waste — then perishes and is forgot ; 

Yet thou, all changeless, heedest not the blot. 
Heaven speaks once more in thunder ; empty space 

Trembles and wakes ; new worlds in ether float, 
Teeming with new creative life, and trace 
Their mighty circles, which others shall displace. 

Thine age is youth, thy youth is hoary age. 

Ever beginning, never ending, thou 
Bearest inscribed upon thy ample page. 

Yesterday, forever, but as now 

Thou art, thou hast been, shall be : though 
I feel myself immortal, when on thee 

I muse, I shrink to nothingness, and bow 



138 WHITTIER-LAND 

Myself before thee, dread Eternity, 
With God coeval, coexisting, still to be. 

I go with thee till time shall be no more, 

I stand with thee on Time's remotest age, 
Ten thousand years, ten thousand times told o'er ; 

Still, still with thee my onward course I urge ; 

And now no longer hear the surge 
Of Time's light billows breaking on the shore 

Of distant earth ; no more the solemn dirge — 
Requiem of worlds, when such are numbered o'er — 
Steals by : still thou art on forever more. 

From that dim distance I turn to gaze 

With fondly searching glance, upon the spot 

Of brief existence, when I met the blaze 
Of morning, bursting on my humble cot, 
And gladness whispered of my happy lot ; 

And now 't is dwindled to a point — a speck — 
And now 't is nothing, and my eye may not 

Longer distinguish it amid the wreck 

Of worlds in ruins, crushed at the Almighty's beck. 

Time — what is time to thee ? a passing thought 
To twice ten thousand ages — a faint spark 

To twice ten thousand suns ; a fibre wrought 
Into the web of infinite — a cork 
Balanced against a world : we hardly mark 

Its being — even its name hath ceased to be; 
Thy wave hath swept it from us, thy dark 

Mantle of years, in dim obscurity 

Hath shrouded it around : Time — what is Time to thee ! 



In 1832 a living ichneumon was brought to Haverhill, 
and was on exhibition at Frinksborough, a section of 
Haverhill now known as "the borough," on the bank of 
the river above the railroad bridge. Three young ladies 
of Haverhill went to see it, escorted by Mr. Whittier. 
They found that the animal had succumbed to the New 
England climate, and had just been buried. One of the 
ladies, Harriet Minot, afterward Mrs. Pitman, a life-long 



WHITTIER'S UNCOLLECTED POEMS 139 

friend of the poet, suggested that he should write an 
elegy, and these are the lines he produced : — 



THE DEAD ICHNEUMON 

Stranger ! they have made thy grave 

By the darkly flowmg river; 
But the washing of its wave 
Shall disturb thee never ! 
Nor its autumn tides which run 

Turbid to the rising sun, 
Nor the harsh and hollow thunder, 
When its fetters burst asunder, 
And its winter ice is sweeping, 
Downw^ard to the ocean's keeping. 

Sleeper ! thou canst rest as calm 

As beside thine own dark stream. 
In the shadow of the palm, 
Or the white sand gleam ! 
Though thy grave be never hid 
By the o'ershadowing pyramid. 
Frowning o'er the desert sand. 
Like no work of mortal hand, 
Telling aye the same proud story 
Of the old Egyptian glory ! 

Wand'rer ! would that we might know 

Something of thy early time — 
Something of thy weal or woe 

In thine own far clime ! 
If thy step hath fallen where 
Those of Cleopatra were, 
"When the Roman cast his crown 
At a woman's footstool down. 
Deeming glorj^'s sunshine dim 
To the smile which welcomed him. 



If beside the reedy Nile 

Thou hast ever held thy way. 

Where the embryo crocodile 
In the damp sedge lay ; 



I40 WHITTIER-LAND 

When the river monster's eye 
Kindled at thy passing by, 
And the pHant reeds were bending 
Where his blackened form was w'ending, 
And the basking serpent started 
Wildly when thy light form darted. 

Thou hast seen the desert steed 

Mounted by his Arab chief, 
Passing like some dream of speed, 

Wonderful and brief ! 
Where the palm-tree's shadows lurk, 
Thou hast seen the turbaned Turk, 
Resting in voluptuous pride 
With his harem at his side, 
Veiled victims of his will, 
Scorned and lost, yet lovely still. 

And the samiel hath gone 

O'er thee like a demon's breath, 
Marking victims one by one 

For its master — Death. 
And the mirage thou hast seen 
Glittering in the sunny sheen. 
Like some lake in sunlight sleeping, 
Where the desert wind was sweeping, 
And the sandy column gliding, 
Like some giant onward striding. 

Once the dwellers of thy home 

Blessed the path thy race had trod. 
Kneeling in the temple dome 

To a reptile god ; 
Where the shrine of Isis shone 
Through the veil before its throne. 
And the priest with fixed eyes 
Watched his human sacrifice ; 
And the priestess knelt in prayer, 
Like some dream of beauty there. 

Thou, un honored and unknown, 
Wand'rer o'er the mighty sea! 

None for thee have reverence shown — 
None have worshipped thee ! 



( 



WHITTIER'S UNCOLLECTED POEMS 141 

Here in vulgar Yankee land, 
Thou hast passed from hand to hand, 
And in Frinksborough found a home, 
"Where no change can ever come ! 
What thy closing hours befell 
None may ask, and none may tell. 

Who hath mourned above thy grave ? 

None — except thy ancient nurse. 
Well she may — thy being gave 

Coppers to her purse! 
Who hath questioned her of thee ? 
None, alas ! save maidens three, 
Here to view thee while in being, 
Yankee curious, paid for seeing, 
And would gratis view once more 
That for which they paid before. 

Yet thy quiet rest may be 

Envied by the human kind. 
Who are showing off like thee, 

To the careless mind. 
Gifts which torture while they flow. 
Thoughts which madden while they glow, 
Pouring out the heart's deep wealth, 
Proffering quiet, ease, and health. 
For the fame which comes to them 
Blended with their requiem ! 

The following poem, which I have never seen in print, 
I find in a manuscript collection of Whittier's early poems, 
in the possession of his cousin, Ann Wendell, of Phila- 
delphia. It is a political curiosity, being a reminiscence 
of the excitement caused by the mystery of the disappear- 
ance of William Morgan, in the vicinity of Niagara Falls, 
in 1826. It was written in 1830, three years before Whit- 
tier became especially active in the anti-slavery cause. 
He was then working in the interest of Henry Clay as 
against Jackson, and the Whigs had adopted some of the 
watchwords of the Anti-Masonic party : — 



142 WHITTIER-LAND 

THE GRAVE OF MORGAN 

Wild torrent of the lakes ! fling out 

Thy mighty wave to breeze and sun, 
And let the rainbow curve above 

The foldings of thy clouds of dun. '\\ 

Uplift thy earthquake voice, and pour 
Its thunder to the reeling shore, 
Till caverned cliff and hanging wood 
Roll back the echo of thy flood. 
For there is one who slumbers now 
Beneath thy bow-encircled brow. 
Whose spirit hath a voice and sign 
More strong, more terrible than thine. 

A million hearts have heard that cry 
Ring upward to the very sky ; 
It thunders still — it cannot sleep, 
But louder than the troubled deep, 
When the fierce spirit of the air 
Hath made his arm of vengeance bare, 
And wave to wave is calling loud 
Beneath the veiling thunder-cloud ; 
That potent voice is sounding still — 
The voice of unrequited ill. 

Dark cataract of the lakes ! thy name 
Unholy deeds have linked to fame. 
High soars to heaven thy giant head. 

Even as a monument to him 
Whose cold unheeded form is laid 

Down, down amid thy caverns dim. 
His requiem the fearful tone 
Of waters falling from their throne 
In the mid air, his burial shroud 
The wreathings of thy torrent cloud, 
His blazonry the rainbow thrown 
Superbly round thy brow of stone. 

Aye, raise thy voice — the sterner one 
Which tells of crime in darkness done, 
Groans upward from thy prison gloom 
Like voices from the thunder's home. 



WHITTIER'S UNCOLLECTED POEMS 143 

And men have heard it, and the might 

Of freemen rising from their thrall 
Shall drag their fetters into light, 

And spurn and trample on them all. 
And vengeance long — too long delayed — 

Shall rouse to wrath the souls of men, 
And freedom raise her holy head 

Above the fallen tyrant then. 

This poem, which was published in ''The Haverhill 
Gazette " in 1829, was copied in many papers of that 
time, but was never in any collection of its author's 
works : — 



THE THUNDER SPIRIT 

Dweller of the unpillared air, 

Marshalling the storm to war, 
Heralding its presence where 

Rolls along thy cloudy car ! 
Thou that speakest from on high, 

Like an earthquake's bursting forth, 
Sounding through the veiled sky 

As an angel's trumpet doth. 

Bending from thy dark dominion 

Like a fierce, revengeful king, 
Blasting with thy fiery pinion 

Every high and holy thing ; 
Smitten from their mountain prison 

Thou hast bid the streams go free, 
And the ruin's smoke has risen, 

Like a sacrifice to thee ! 



Monarch of each cloudy form, 

Gathered on the blue of heaven, 
"When the trumpet of the storm 

To thy lip of flame is given ! 
In the wave and in the breeze, 

In the shadow and the sun, 
God hath many languages, 

And thy mighty voice is one ! 



144 WHITTIER-LAND 

Here is a poem of Whittier's that will remind every 
reader of the hymn "The Worship of Nature," which 
first appeared without a title in the "Tent on the Beach." 
And yet there is no line in it, and scarcely a phrase, which 
was used in this last named poem. I find it in the " New 
England Review," of Hartford, under date of January 
24, 1 83 1. It would seem that " The Worship of Nature " 
was a favorite theme of his, for a still earlier treatment 
of it I have found in the " Haverhill Gazette " of October 
5, 1827, written before the poet was twenty years of age. 
It is a curious fact that while in the version of 1827 there 
are a few lines and phrases which were adopted forty 
years afterward, the lines given here are none of them 
copied in the final revision of the poem. 

THE WORSHIP OF NATURE 

" The air 
Is glorious with the spirit-march 
Of messengers of prayer." 

There is a solemn hymn goes up 

From Nature to the Lord above, 
And offerings from her incense-cup 

Are poured in gratitude and love ; 
And from each flower that lifts its eye 

In modest silence in the shade 
To the strong woods that kiss the sky 

A thankful song of praise is made. 

There is no solitude on earth — 

" In every leaf there is a tongue " — 
In every glen a voice of mirth — 

From every hill a hymn is sung ; 
And every wild and hidden dell, 

Where human footsteps never trod, 
Is wafting songs of joy, which tell 

The praises of their maker — God. 

Each mountain gives an altar birth, 
And has a shrine to worship given ; 



WHITTIER'S UNCOLLECTED POEMS 145 

Each breeze which rises from the earth 

Is loaded with a song of Heaven ; 
Each w^ave that leaps along the main 

Sends solemn music on the air, 
And winds which sweep o'er ocean's plain 

Bear off their voice of grateful prayer. 

When Night's dark wings are slowly furled 

And clouds roll off the orient sky, 
And sunUght bursts upon the world, 

Like angels' pinions flashing by, 
A matin hymn unheard will rise 

From every flower and hill and tree, 
And songs of joy float up the skies. 

Like holy anthems from the sea. 

When sunlight dies, and shadows fall, 

And twilight plumes her rosy wing. 
Devotion's breath lifts Music's pall, 

And silvery voices seem to sing. 
And when the earth falls soft to rest. 

And young wind's pinions seem to tire, 
Then the pure streams upon its breast 

Join their glad sounds with Nature's lyre. 

And when the sky that bends above 

Is lighted up with spirit fires, 
A gladdening song of praise and love 

Is pealing from the sky-tuned lyres ; 
And every star that throws its light 

From off Creation's bending brow, 
Is offering on the shrine of Night 

The same unchanging subject-vow. 

Thus Earth 's a temple vast and fair, 

Filled with the glorious works of love 
When earth and sky and sea and air 

Join in the praise of God above ; 
And still through countless coming years 

Unwearied songs of praise shall roll 
On plumes of love to Him who hears 

The softest strain in Music's soul. 



146 WHITTIER-LAND 

There was a remarkable display of the aurora boreal is in 
January, 1837, ^"<^ this poem commemorates the phe- 
nomenon : — 

THE NORTHERN LIGHTS 

A light is troubling heaven ! A strange dull glow- 
Hangs like a half-quenched veil of fire between 
The blue sky and the earth ; and the shorn stars 
Gleam faint and sickly through it. Day hath left 
No token of its parting, and the blush 
With which it welcomed the embrace of Night 
Has faded from the blue cheek of the West ; 
Yet from the solemn darkness of the North, 
Stretched o'er the " empty place " by God's own hand, 
Trembles and waves that curtain of pale fire, — 
Tingeing with baleful and unnatural hues 
The winter snows beneath. It is as if 
Nature's last curse — the fearful plague of fire — 
Were working in the elements, and the skies 
Even as a scroll consuming. 

Lo, a change ! 
The fiery wonder sinks, and all along 
A dark deep crimson rests — a sea of blood. 
Untroubled by a wave. And over all 
Bendeth a luminous arch of pale, pure white, 
Clearly contrasted with the blue above. 
And the dark red beneath it. Glorious ! 
How like a pathway for the Shining Ones, 
The pure and beautiful intelligences 
Who minister in Heaven, and offer up 
Their praise as incense, or like that which rose 
Before the Pilgrim prophet, when the tread 
Of the most holy angels brightened it. 
And in his dream the haunted sleeper saw 
The ascending and descending of the blest ! 

And yet another change ! O'er half the sky 

A long bright flame is trembling, like the sword 

Of the great angel of the guarded gate 

Of Paradise, when all the holy streams 

And beautiful bowers of Eden-land blushed red 

Beneath its awful wavering, and the eyes 



WHITTIER'S UNCOLLECTED POEMS 147 

Of the outcasts quailed before its glare, 
As from the immediate questioning of God. 

And men are gazing at these "signs in heaven," 
With most unwonted earnestness, and fair 
And beautiful brows are reddening in the light 
Of this strange vision of the upper air : 
Even as the dwellers of Jerusalem 
Beleaguered by the Romans — when the skies 
Of Palestine were thronged with fiery shapes. 
And from Antonia's tower the mailed Jew 
Saw his own image pictured in the air. 
Contending with the heathen ; and the priest 
Beside the temple's altar veiled his face 
From that fire-written language of the sky. 

Oh God of mystery ! these fires are thine ! 

Thy breath hath kindled them, and there they burn 

Amid the permanent glory of Thy heavens, 

That earliest revelation written out 

In starry language, visible to all, 

Lifting unto Thyself the heavy eyes 

Of the down -looking spirits of the earth ! 

The Indian, leaning on his hunting-bow. 

Where the ice-mountains hem the frozen pole, 

And the hoar architect of winter piles 

With tireless hand his snowy pyramids. 

Looks upward in deep awe, — while all around 

The eternal ices kindle with the hues 

Which tremble on their gleaming pinnacles 

And sharp cold ridges of enduring frost, — 

And points his child to the Great Spirit's fire. 

Alas for us who boast of deeper lore, 
If in the maze of our vague theories, 
Our speculations, and our restless aim 
To search the secret, and familiarize 
The awful things of nature, we forget 
To own Thy presence in Thy mysteries ! 

This imitation of " The Old Oaken Bucket " was writ- 
ten in 1826, when Whittier was in his nineteenth year, 
and except a single stanza, no part of it was ever before 



148 WHITTIER-LAND 

in print. The willow the young poet had in mind was on 
the bank of Country Brook, near Country Bridge, and 
also near the site of Thomas Whittier's log house. Mr. 
Whittier once pointed out this spot to me as one in 
which he delighted in his youth. On a grassy bank, almost 
encircled by a bend in the stream, stood, and perhaps 
still stands, just such a " storm-battered, water-washed 
willow " as is here described : — 

THE WILLOW 

Oh, dear to my heart are the scenes which delighted 
My fancy in moments I ne'er can recall, 
When each happy hour new pleasures invited, 
And hope pictured visions more lovely than all. 
When I gazed with a light heart transported and glowing, 
On the forest-crowned hill, and the rivulet's tide, 
O'ershaded with tall grass, and rapidly flowing 
Around the lone willow that stood by its side — 
The storm-battered willow, the ivy-bound willow, the water-washed 
willow, that grew by its side. 

Dear scenes of past years, when the objects around me 
Seemed forms to awaken the transports of joy ; 
Ere yet the dull cares of experience had found me. 
The dearly-loved visions of youth to destroy, — 
Ye seem to awaken, whene'er I discover 
The grass-shadowed rivulet rapidly glide. 
The green verdant meads of the vale \yandering over 
And laving the willows that stand by its side — 
The storm-battered willow, the ivy-bound willow, the water-washed 
willow, that stands by its side ; — 

How oft 'neath the shade of that wide -spreading willow 
I have laid myself down from anxiety free, 
Reclining my head on the green grassy pillow. 
That waved round the roots of that dearly-loved tree ; 
Where swift from the far distant uplands descending, 
In the bright sunbeam sparkling, the rivulet's tide 
With murmuring echoes came gracefully wending 
Its course round the willow that stood by its side — 
The storm-battered willow, the ivy-bound willow, the water-washed 
willow that stood by its side. 



I 



WHITTIER'S UNCOLLECTED POEMS 149 

Haunts of my childhood, that used to awaken 
Emotions of joy in my infantile breast, 
Ere yet the fond pleasures of youth had forsaken 
My bosom, and all the bright dreams you impressed 
On my memory had faded, ye give not the feeling 
Of joy that ye did, when I gazed on the tide. 
As gracefully winding, its currents came stealing 
Around the lone willow that stood by its side — 
The storm-battered willow, the ivy-bound willow, the water-washed 
willow, that stood by its side. 

This is a fragment of a poem written in the album of 
a cousin in Philadelphia, in 1838. It was never before in 
print : — 

THE USES OF SORROW 

It may be that tears at whiles 

Should take the place of folly's smiles, 

When 'neath some Heaven-directed blow, 

Like those of Horeb's rock, they flow ; 

For sorrows are in mercy given 

To fit the chastened soul for Heaven ; 

Prompting with woe and weariness 

Our yearning for that better sky. 

Which, as the shadows close on this. 

Grows brighter to the longing eye. 

For each unwelcome blow may break, 

Perchance, some chain which binds us here ; 

And clouds around the heart may make 

The vision of our faith more clear; 

As through the shadowy veil of even 

The eye looks farthest into Heaven, 

On gleams of star, and depths of blue, 

The fervid sunshine never knew ! 

In the summer of 1856, Charles A. Dana, then one of 
the editors of the New York "Tribune," wrote to Whittier, 
calling upon him for campaign songs for Fremont. He 
said : " A powerful means of exciting and maintaining the 
spirit of freedom in the coming decisive contest must be 
songs. If we are to conquer, as I trust in God we are, a 



I50 WHITTIER-LAND 

great deal must be done by that genial and inspiring 
stimulant." Whittier responded with several songs sung 
during the campaign for free Kansas, but the following 
lines for some reason he desired should appear without 
his name, either in the " National Era," in which they 
first appeared, August 14, 1856, or with the music to which 
they were set. A recently discovered letter, written by him 
to a friend in Philadelphia who was intrusted to set the 
song to music, avows its authorship, and also credits to 
his sister Elizabeth another song, " Fremont's Ride," pub- 
lished in the same number of the " Era." As the brother 
probably had some hand in the composition of this last- 
mentioned piece, it is given here. This is Whittier's 
song:— 

WE'RE FREE 

The robber o'er the prairie stalks 

And calls the land his own, 
And he who talks as Slavery talks 
Is free to talk alone. 

But tell the knaves we are not slaves, 

And tell them slaves we ne'er will be ; 
Come weal or w^oe, the world shall know, 
We 're free, we 're free, we 're free. 

Oh, watcher on the outer wall, 

How wears the night away ? 
I hear the birds of morning call, 

I see the break of day ! 

Rise, tell the knaves, etc. 

The hands that hold the sword and purse 

Ere long shall lose their prey; 
And they who blindly wrought the curse, 

The curse shall sweep away ! 
Then tell the knaves, etc. 

The land again in peace shall rest, 

With blood no longer stained ; 
The virgin beauty of the West 

Shall be no more profaned. 

We '11 teach the knaves, etc. 



WHITTIER'S UNCOLLECTED POEMS 151 

The snake about her cradle twined, 

Shall infant Kansas tear ; 
And freely on the Western wind 

Shall float her golden hair 1 
So tell the knaves, etc. 

Then let the idlers stand apart, 
And cowards shun the fight ; 
We '11 band together, heart to heart, 
Forget, forgive, unite ! 

And tell the knaves we are not slaves, 

And tell them slaves we ne'er will be ; 
Come weal or woe, the world shall know 
We 're free, we 're free, we 're free 1 



It was Whittier's habit to freely suggest lines and even 
whole stanzas for poems submitted to him for criticism, 
and it may be readily believed that his hand is shown in 
this campaign song of his sister's : — 

FREMONT'S RIDE 

As his mountain men followed, undoubting and bold, 
O'er hill and o'er desert, through tempest and cold, 
So the people now burst from each fetter and thrall. 
And answer with shouting the wild bugle call. 
Who '11 follow ? Who '11 follow ? 

The bands gather fast ; 

They who ride with Fremont 

Ride in triumph at last ! 

Oh, speed the bold riders ! fling loose every rein. 
The race run for freedom is not run in vain ; 
From mountain and prairie, from lake and from sea, 
Ride gallant and hopeful, ride fearless and free ! 
Who '11 follow, etc. 

The shades of the Fathers for Freedom who died, 
As they rode in the war storm, now ride at our side ; 
Their great souls shall strengthen our own for the fray, 
And the glance of our leader make certain the way. 
Then follow, etc. 



152 WHITTIER-LAND 

We ride not for honors, ambition or place, 
But the wrong to redress, and redeem the disgrace ; 
Not for the North, nor for South, but the best good of all, 
We follow Fremont, and his wild bugle call ! 
Who '11 follow ? Who '11 follow ? 

The bands gather fast ; 

They who ride with Fremont 

Ride in triumph at last ! 

The following poem was written at the close of his 
last term at the Academy, and was published in the " Ha- 
verhill Gazette" of October 4, 1828, signed ''Adrian." 
Probably no other poem written by him in those days 
was so universally copied by the press of the whole coun- 
try. Its rather pessimistic tone no doubt caused the 
poet to omit it from collections made after the great 
change in his outlook upon life to which reference has 
been made on another page. 



THE TIMES 

" Oh dear! oh dear! I grieve, I grieve, 
For the good old days of Adam and Eve." 

The times, the times, I say, the times are growing worse than 

ever ; 
The good old ways our fathers trod shall grace their children 

never. 
The homely hearth of ancient mirth, all traces of the plough, 
The places of their worship, are all forgotten now ! 

Farewell the farmers' honest looks and independent mien, 
The tassel of his waving corn, the blossom of the bean, 
The turnip top, the pumpkin vine, the produce of his toil, 
Have given place to flower pots, and plants of foreign soil. 

Farewell the pleasant husking match, its merry after scenes, 
When Indian pudding smoked beside the giant pot of beans ; 
When ladies joined the social band, nor once affected fear, 
But gave a pretty cheek to kiss for every crimson ear. 






WHITTIER'S UNCOLLECTED POEMS 153 

Affected modesty was not the test of virtue then, 

And few took pains to swoon away at sight of ugly men ; 

For well they knew the purity which woman's heart should own 

Depends not on appearances, but on the heart alone. 

Farewell unto the buoyancy and openness of youth — 
The confidence of kindly hearts — the consciousness of truth, 
The honest tone of sympathy — the language of the heart — 
Now cursed by fashion's tyranny, or turned aside by art. 

Farewell the social quilting match, the song, the merry play, 
The whirling of a pewter plate, the merry fines to pay, 
The mimic marriage brought about by leaping o'er a broom, 
The good old bhnd man's buff, the laugh that shook the room. 

Farewell the days of industry — the time has glided by 
When pretty hands were prettiest in making pumpkin pie. 
When waiting maids were needed not, and morning brought along 
The music of the spinning wheel, the milkmaid's careless song. 

Ah, days of artless innocence! Your dwellings are no more. 
And ye are turning from the path our fathers trod before ; 
The homely hearth of honest mirth, all traces of the plough, 
The places of their worshiping, are all forgotten now ! 

I find among Mr. Whittier's papers the first draft of a 
poem that he does not seem to have prepared for pubhca- 
tion. As it was written on the back of a note he received 
in March, 1890, that was probably the date of its compo- 
sition : — 

A SONG OF PRAISES 

For the land that gave me birth ; 
For my native home and hearth ; 
For the change and overturning 
Of the times of my sojourning ; 
For the world-step forward taken ; 
For an evil way forsaken ; 

For cruel law abolished ; 

For idol shrines demolished ; 



154 



WHITTIER-LAND 



For the tools of peaceful labor 
Wrought from broken gun and sabre 
For the slave-chain rent asunder 
And by free feet trodden under ; 
For the truth defeating error ; 
For the love that casts out terror ; 
For the truer, clearer vision 
Of Humanity's great mission ; — 
For all that man upraises, 
I sing this song of praises. 



INDEX 



I 



INDEX 



"Abram Morrison," 86. 

"Adrian," 152. 

Agamenticus, 86, 8g. 

Aldrich, T. B., 75. 

Allinson, Francis Greenleaf, 39. 

Allinson, W. J., 39. 

American Manufacturer, 69, 71, 102, 136. 

Amesbury, 3, 42, 55-89- 

Amesbury public library, 95. 

Ancient desk, 20. 

Andover, 5. 

Anecdotes as told by Whittier : Aunt 
Mercy's vision, 22, 23 ; Country Bridge 
ghost, 15 ; conscience stirred by thun- j 
derstorm, 27; Elizabeth's practical , 
joke, 28 ; the "tipsy wife," 3i>32 ; cold 
drives to Amesbury, 33; "Old But- | 
ler," 36; the Morse boys, 36; Garri- j 
son's first visit, 37; a Quaker swaps j 
cows, 37; "the power of figures," 
40-42 ; instance of guidance of spirit, 1 
82, 83; legend of Po Hill, 85, 86; \ 
Chase characterizes Lincoln's stories, 
98; Hiram Collins and Emerson, 98, 99. 

Anecdotes related of Whittier : Last 
visit to birthplace, 24-38 ; the fire on the 
hearth, 26; attempt at levitation, 28; 
visits site of "In School Days,' 32; 
cherry-tree incident, 34 ; story of Eve- 
lina Bray, 68-72 ; receives lightning 
stroke, 73 : taking notes at Quaker ! 
meeting, 82 ; sees mirage at Salisbury 
Beach, 91 ; Miss Phelps describes first 
meeting, 102; thirteen at table, 93,94; 
clock strikes mysteriously, 95 ; the May j 
Quarterly Meeting, 96 ; saving money < 
for funeral expenses, 96; the pet par- 
rot, 97, 98 ; husking at West Ossipee, 
I II- 1 14; an evening at Bearcamp, 
1 14-1 18 ; Alice Freeman Palmer's story, 
118,119; contract of perpetual bache- [ 
lorhood, 119; his English Quaker 
guest, 122 ; escapes dedication of Bart- 
lett statue, 122. 
Anti-Masonic poem, 141. 
Appledore, 92. 
Artichoke River, 57, 58. 
"A Sea Dream," 69. 
"A Song of Praises," 153, 154- 
Ayer, Capt. Edmund, 29, 30. 
Ayer, Lydia, 26, 30. 
Ayer, Lydia Amanda (Mrs. Evans), 30. 
Ayer, Mrs., 117. 



Bagley, Valentine, 84. 
Bailey, Mary, 116. 
Bailey's Hill, 83. 
Bancroft, George, 64. 
Barnard, Mary, 96. 
Bartlett, Josiah, 84, 122-125. 
Bearcamp House, no- 11 7. 
Beecher, Catherine, 70. 
Beecher, Henry Ward, 76. 
Birchy Meadow, 44. 
Birthplace of Whittier, 8, 9-40. 
Blaine, James G., 64, 77, 78. 
Boar's Head, 86, 89. 
Bonny Beag, 86. 
Boon Island, 86. 
Boston "Statesman," 102. 
Boutelle, Thomas E., 99. 
Boyd, Rev. P. S., 4- 
Boynton, E. Moody, 122-124. 
Bradbury', Judge, and wife, 56. 
Bradford, 3. 
Bradstreet, Anne, 5. 
Bray, Evelina, 68, 71. 
Brown's Hill. 84. 
Burnham, Thomas E., 38. 
Burroughs, George, loi. 
Butler, Benjamin F., 36. 
Butler, Philip, 76. 
Butters, Charles, 38. 
Byron, Lord, 134-136. 

Caldwell, Adelaide, 112, 113, 117. 

Caldwell, Louis, 113. 

Caldwell, Mary (Whittier), 25, 74. 

Cape Ann, 86. 

Captain's Well, The, 83, 84. 

Carleton, James H., 38. 

Cartland, Gertrude (Whittier), 20, 104, 

Cartland house, Newburyport, 20, loi. 

Cartland, Joseph, 82, 85, 92, 104, 113. 

Catalogue of father's library, 24, 25. 

Gate, George W., loi. 

Centre Harbor, N. H.,99, no, 113. 

Chain Bridge, 59, 60. 

Chamber in which Whittier died, 94- 

" Changeling, The," 92. 

Chase, Aaron, 30, 32. 

Chase, Mrs. Moses, 32. 

Chase, Salmon P., 98. 

Child, Lydia Maria, 75. 

Chocorua, 110-115. 

Churchill, J. W., 123. 



158 INDEX 



Claflin, William, 102, 118. 

Clarkson, Thomas, 25. 

Clay, Henry, 77, 141. 

" Cobbler Keezar's Vision," 86. 

Coffin, Joshua, 26, 30, 31, 103, 104. 

Coggswell, William, 64. 

Collier, Rev. William R., 102. 

Collins, Hiram, 98, 99, 124. 

" Common Question, The," 97. 

Corliss Hill, 30-32. 

" Countess, The," 47, 51. 

Country Bridge, 14, 15, 46, 

Country Brook, 14-17, 104. 

Crane Neck, 86. 

Currier, Horace, 117. 

Carson's Mill, 57, 58. 

Cushing, Caleb, 5. 

Dana, Charles A., 149. 
Danvers, 86. 

Daughters of the Revolution, 84. 
Davis, Robert T., 122. 
Deer Island, 5, 58-60. 
Dickens, Charles, 108. 
" Division, The," 109. 
Douglass, Frederick, 64. 
Downey, Evelina (Bray), 71. 
Downey, W. S., 70. 
Duncan, Sarah M. F., 38. 
Dustin, Hannah, 40. 

East Haverhill, 3. 

East Haverhill church, 51. 

Ela, Amelia, 19. 

•' Eleanor," 46. 

Ellwood's " Drab-Skirted Muse," 25. 

Emerson, Nehemiah, 66. 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 65, 99. 

Emmons, " Ginger-Pop," 124. 

Essex Club, 64. 

" Eternal Goodness, The," 63, 107. 

"Eternity," 137, 138. 

" Exiles, The," 84. 

Fernside Brook, 9, 11, 12, 16, 17. 

Ferry, the, 75. 

Fields, Annie, 102. 

Fields, James T., 46, 102. 

Fletcher, Rev. J. C, 58, 89, 92. 

Ford, Miss, 112, 116. 

" Fountain, The," 87. 

Fox, George, 25, 47. 

" Fragment, A," 136. 

Frankle, Annie W., 38. 

Fremont, J. C, 149. 

Friend Street, 58. 

Friends' meeting-house, 33, 80, 81. 

Frietchie, Barbara, 65. 

Frinksborough, 138. 

" Gail Hamilton's Wedding," 120-122. 

Garden at birthplace, 18. 

Garden room, Amesbury, 32, 62-71. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 37, 76, 103, 104. 

Garrison's birthplace, 103. 

Golden Hill, 8. 

Goodspeed, C. E., 51 note. 

" Goody " Martin, 56, 57, 84. 



Gordon, " Chinese," 65. 
Gove, Sarah Abby, 92, 93. 
" Grave of Morgan, The," 142, 143. 
Green, Ruth, 29. 
Greene, Nathaniel, 102. 
Greenleaf, Sarah, 20, 22, 29, 103. 
Grimke, Angelina, iig. 
Group at Sturtevant's, 113. 
Groveland, 3. 

" Hamilton, Gail," 108, 120-122. 

Hampton Beach, 86, 88. 

Hampton Falls, 92, 93. 

Hampton marshes, 92. 

Hampton River, 88. 

Haskell, George, 40. 

" Haunted Bridge of Country Brook," 

Haverhill, 3, 7. 

Haverhill Academy, 6, 129. 

" Haverhill Gazette," 24, 48, 136, 143, 

152. 
Hawkswood, 58. 
Hay, John, 75. 

Higginson, Thomas Wentworth, 78. 
Hines, Peter, 117. 
Hoar, George F., 64. 
Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 108. 
" Homecoming of the Bride, The," 15, 

104. 
How, George C, 38. 
" How they climbed Chocorua," iii. 
Howe, Julia Ward, 75. 
Hume, Isabel, 116. 
Huntington, Jacob R., 84, 122. 
Hussey, Mercy Evans, 21,26, 61, 62,85. 

Ichneumon, the living, 138. 
" In School Days," 26, 30, 32. 
Ipswich, 86. 

Ireson, Capt. Benjamin, 72. 
Isles of Shoals, 86, 89, 91, 117. 
" I would not lose that Romance 
Wild," 130. 

Jackson, Andrew, 141. 
Job's Hill, 9, 12, 17, 36. 
Johnson, Caroline, loi. 
Johnson, Mary, loi. 
" June on the Merrimac," 58. 
" Justice and Expediency," 22. 

Kansas, 150, 151. 

Kearsarge, 86. 

Kelley, Clarence E., 38. 

Kimball's Pond, 95. 

Kitchen at birthplace, 17, 19, 21, 23. 

Knox brothers, no-115. 

Ladd, " Squire," 32. 

Lake Kenoza, 8, 10. 

Lansing, Miss, iii, 116. 

Larcom, Lucy, iii, 114, 116. 

" Last Walk in Autumn, The," 56. 

" Last Will of Man in Bear-Trap, The," 

116-118. 
"Laurels, The," 58. 
Lee, N. H., 100. 



INDEX 



159 



Little Boar's Head, 86. 
Livermore, Harriet, 39, loi. 
Lloyd, Elizabeth, 34. 
Longfellow, Henry W., 65, 108. 
Lowell, James Russell, 108. 

" Mabel Martin," 56, 84. 

Macy house, 84. 

Macy, Thomas, 84. 

" Maids of Attitash, The," 95. 

Map of Whittier-Land, xii. 

Marlboro Hotel, 102. 

" ^Memorial, A," 98. 

" Memories," 66. 

Menahga, 46. 

Merrimac, town, 3, 44, 82. 

Merrimac River, 3, 4, 44, 56, 58, 60. 

Millvale, 15, 46, 104. 

Minot, Harriet (Mrs. Pitman), 138. 

" Miriam," 86. 

Mitford, Mary Russell, 75. 

" Moll Pitcher," 66 note, 131. 

Monadnock, 33, 86. 

Morgan, William, 141. 

Morrill, Jettie, 116. 

Morse, " Goody," 104. 

Mother's room, 22, 23. 

Moulton house, Hampton, 92. 

Mouhon's Hill, 58. 

Mount Washington, 86. 

Mundy Hill, 84, 87. 

"My Double," 123-125. 

" My Namesake," 39. 

"My Playmate," 44, 46, 67. 

" Name, A," 74. 

" National Era," 76, 150. 

Newbury, 3, 14, 32, 44, 56, 58, 86, 103. 

Newburyport, 3, 86. 

" New England," 131-134. 

"New England Review," 43, 76, 131, 

137- 
New York " Tribune," 149. 
" New Wife and the Old, The," 92. 
Niagara Falls, 141. 
Nicholson, Elizabeth, 34. 
" Northern Lights, The," 146, 147. 
Nottingham, N. H., 96, 

Oak Knoll, Danvers, 99, loi, 122, 123. 

Ode for dedication of Academy, 7. 

" Old Burying Ground, The," 51. 

" Old Oaken Bucket, The," 147. 

Old South meeting-house, Newburyport, 

103, 104. 
" One of the Signers," 122. 
Ordway, Alfred A., 17-19, 35, 38, 46. 
Ossipee range, 86. 
" Our River," 58. 
" Ours," 79, 80. 

Palmer, Alice Freeman, 118, 119. 

Passaconaway, 86. 

Pawtuckaway range, 95. 

Peaslee house, " Old Garrison," 46, 47, 

55- 
Peaslee, Joseph, 47. 
Peaslee, Mary, 29, 46. 



" Pennsylvania Freeman," 61, 70, 76. 

Pennsylvania Hall, 119. 

Pickard, Elizabeth (Whittier), 20, 22, 
39, 71, 74, 75, 85,90, 94, '"9, 116. 

Pickard, Greenleaf Whittier, 74, 04. 

Pickard, S.T., u6, 117. ' ' ' ^^ 

Pillsbury, Mary, 35. 

Pleasant Valley, 55, 58. 

Plum Island, 86. 

Plummer, Celeste, 112, 116. 

Poems hitherto uncollected : Ode sung 
at dedication of Academy, 7 ; Catalogue 
of his father's library, 22 ; Lines in al- 
bum, 30; "A Retrospect,"' 35; "The 
Plamt of the Merrimac," 59, 60 ; " The 
Division," 109; " How they climbed 
Chocorua," 111-114; "To the Un- 
known and Absent Author of ' How 
they climbed Chocorua,'" 114, 115; 
" Last Will of Man in Bear-Trap," 
1 16-1 18 ; Weld epithalamium, 1 19, 120 ; 
" Gail Hamilton's Wedding," 120- 
122; "My Double," 123-125; "I 
would not lose that Romance Wild," 
130; "New England," 131-133; 
" That Vow of Thine," 133, 134 ; " The 
Spectre," 135,136; "A Fragment," 
136, 137 ; " Eternity," 137, 138; " Dead 
Ichneumon," 139-141 ; "Grave of 
Morgan," 142, 143; "The Thunder 
Spirit," 143 ; " Worship of Nature," 
144, 145 ; " Northern Lights," 146, 147; 
" The Willow," 148, 149 ; " Uses of 
Sorrow," 149 ; " We 're Free," 150, 
151 ; " Fremont's Ride," 151, 152 ; 
"The Times," 152, 153; "Song of 
Praises," 153, 154. 

Po Hill, 33, 57, 84, 87. 

Pond Hills, 44. 

Porter, Dudley, 38. 

Porter, J. S., 25, 71. 

Portland, 20, 22, 118. 

Powow River, 56, 57, 60, 79, 83, 84, 86-87, 
88. 

" Preacher, The," 84. 

" Pressed Gentian, The," 64. 

Purchase of birthplace, 38. 

Ramoth Hill, 46, 67. 

"Relic, The," 64. 

" Revisited," 58. 

Reunion of schoolmates, 70. 

River Path, picture of, 5. 

" River Path, The," 49, 55, 56. 

River valley, near grave of Countess, 

49. 
Rocks Bridge, 48. 
Rocks Village, 32, 44, 46, 51, 55. 
Rocky Hill, 84. 

Rocky Hill meeting-house, 87, 8g. 
Rogers, John, 125. 
Rowley, 86. 

Salisbury, 3, 14. 
Salisbury Beach, 86, 88, 89. 
Salisbury Point, 77. 
Saltonstall mansion, 45. 
Sanders, Susan B., 38. 



i6o 



INDEX 



" Sea Dream, A,"' 69. 

Scene on Country Brook, 43. 

Sewel's " Painful History," 25. 

Silver Hill, 8, 10. 

Smith, Joseph Lindon, 26. 

Smith, Mary Emerson, 66, 67. 

Smith, S. F., 71, 72. 

Smith, Mrs. S. F., 71, 72. 

" Snovv-Bound," 12, 20, 24, 39, 48, 63, 

74- 
Snow-Bound barn, 12. 
Snovv-Bound kitchen, 12, 17-52. 
Somersworth, N. H., 22. 
" Song of Praises, A," 153, 154. 
Sparhawk, Dr. Thomas, 76. 
" Spectre, The," 135, 136. 
Spofford, Harriet Prescott, 5, 59. 
Stanton, Edwin M., 84. 
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 75. 
Sturge, Joseph, 61, 63-65. 
Sturtevant, Miss, 112. 
Sturtevant, Mrs., 117. 
Sturtevant's, no, 113. 
Sumner, Charles, 108. 
Sycamores, the, 8, 45. 

Tallant, Hugh, 45. 

Tappan, Lewis, 62. 

Taylor, Bayard, 65. 

Taylor, Marie, 66. 

"Telling the Bees," 17. 

" Tent on the Beach, The," 74, 87, go, 

91. 
'•That Vow of Thine," 133, 134. 
Thaxter, Celia, 92. 
Thayer, Abijah W., 24. 
Thayer, Sarah S., 24. 
Thomas, Mary Emerson (Smith), 66, 67. 
Thoreau, Henry D., 5. 
Thornton, Sir Edward, 58. 
"Times, The," 152, 153. 
" To My Old Schoolmaster," 30, 104. 
Tracy, Rlrs., 49. 
Trowbridge, J. T., 28, 40. 
Turner, Judge, 77. 

Union Cemetery, 29, 57, 84, 85. 
" Up and Down the Merrimac," 4. 
" Uses of Sorrow, The," 149. 

\Vachusett, 33, 86. 
Wade, Mrs., 113. 
Wakenian, Rev. Mr., 94. 
Ward, Elizabeth Phelps, 102. 
Washington, George, 45, 60. 
Weld, Dr. Elias, 48-50, 66. 



Weld, Theodore D., 51, 119. 

Wendell, Ann, 141. 

"We 're Free," 150, 151. 

West, Mary S., 46. 

West Ossipee, N. H., no, iii. 

Whiteface, 86. 

Whitefield church, 103. 

Whitefield, George, 103, 104. 

Whittier, Abigail, 22-24, 26, 74, 78. 

Whittier, Elizabeth H.,28, 34,61, 62, 74, 

75, 7S, 85, 90-92, 150. 
Whittier Hill, 14, 84. 
Whittier home, Amesbury, 61-79, 86. 
Whittier, John, 12, 20, 24, 85. 
Whittier, John Greenleaf, reviews Boyd's 
" Up and Down the Merrimac," 4 ; 
interest in psychical research, 23 ; cata- 
logues his father's library, 24, 25 ; his 
early pessimism, 42-44, 129 ; letter to 
Dr. Weld, 50, 51 ; carrier's address 
quoted, 51 note; removal to Ames- 
Ijury, 60, 61 ; tribute of Essex Club, 
64 ; friendship for schoolmates, 66-72 ; 
reason why never married, 68 ; portrait 
at age of twenty-two, 69 ; prostrated 
by lightning, 73 ; person referred to in 
"Memories" and "My Playmate," 
67 ; receives bullet wound, 76 ; at 
town meeting, 77 ; home life sketched 
by Higginson, 78 ; plans Friends' meet- 
ing-house, 80; preferred silent meet- 
ings, 81, 82; interest in psychical re- 
search, 83 ; his cemetery lot, 85 ; care 
for Amesbury public library, 96 ; por- 
trait at age of forty-nine, 95 ; his Bos- 
ton homes, 102 ; letter to Newbury 
celebration, 103, 104; radical change in 
his spirit, 129 ; peculiarity of his laugh, 
108. 
Whittier, Joseph, 20, 29, 47. 
Whittier, Joseph, 2d, 29. 
Whittier, Mary, 26, 29. 
Whittier, Matthew Franklin, 26, 37, 65, 

74, 8s, 100. 
Whittier mill, 18. 
Whittier, Moses, 12, 20, 75, 85. 
Whittier, Obadiah, 75. 
Whittier, Thomas, 14, 15, 29,46. 
"Willow, The," 148, 149. 
Winthrop Hotel, 102. 
Winthrop, Robert C, 64. 
" Witch's Daughter, The," 56. 
"Wood Giant, The," 99, 100. 
Woodman, Mrs. Abby, loi. 
" Worship of Nature, The," 144, 145. 
" Wreck of Rivermouth, The," 88. 



Electrotyped and printed by H . O. Houghton b' Co. 
Cambridge, Mass., U.S. A. 



A LIST OF THE WORKS 

OF 

^ol)n (Urtetileaf W\)ittm 



Writings of 
JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 



Nc 



O edition of the Poetical and Prose Writings of John 
Greenleaf Whittier is complete and authorized which does 
7iot bear the i?nprint of Houghton, Mifflin 6^ Company. 



COMPLETE WORKS 

Riverside Edition. In 7 volumes. 

POETR V 

1. Narrative and Legendary Poems. 

2. Poems of Nature ; Poems Subjective and Remi- 

niscent; Religious Poems. 

3. Anti-Slavery ; Songs of Labor and Reform. 

4. Personal Poems ; Occasional Poems ; Tent on 

the Beach ; Appendix. 

PROSE 

1. Margaret Smith's Journal ; Tales and Sketches. 

2. Old Portraits and Modern Sketches; Personal 

Sketches and Tributes ; Historical Papers. 

3. The Conflict with Slavery; Politics and Re- 

form ; The Inner Life ; Criticism. 

Each volume, crown 8vo, gilt top ; the set, $10.50. With 
**Life of Whittier" (2 vols.) by Samuel T. Pickard, 
9 vols., $14.50. 



PROSE WORKS 

Riverside Edition. With Notes by the Author, and etched 
Portrait. 3 vols, crown 8vo, gih top, ^4.50. 



POEMS 

Riverside Edition. With Portraits, Notes, etc. 4 vols., 
crown 8vo, gilt top, $6.00. 

Handy- Volume Edition. With Portraits, and a View of 
Whittier's Oak Knoll Home. 4 vols., i6mo, gilt top, 
in cloth box, $5.00. Bound in full, flexible leather, 
$8.00. 

Cajnbridge Edition. With a Biographical Sketch, Notes, 
Index to Titles and First Lines, a Portrait, and an 
engraving of Whittier's Amesbury Home. Large 
crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. 

Library Edition. With Portrait and 15 full-page Photo- 
gravures. 8vo, gilt top, $2.50. 

Household Edition. With Portrait and Illustrations. 
Crown 8vo, $1.50. 

Cabifiet Edition. From new plates, with numbered lines, 
and Portrait. i6mo, gilt top, $1.00. 

SEPARATE POEMS 

Snow- Bound. A Winter Idyl. Holiday Edition. With 
eight Photogravures and Portrait. i6mo, gilt top, 
$1.50. 

The Tent on the Beach. Holiday Edition. With ru- 
bricated Initials and 12 full-page Photogravure Illus- 
trations by Charles H. Woodbury and Marcia O. 
Woodbury. i2mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

At Sundown. With Portrait and 8 Photogravures. 
i6mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

Legends and Lyrics. i6mo, gilt top, 75 cents. 



COMPILATIONS 

Birthday Book. With Portrait and 12 Illustrations. 
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Calendar Book. 32010, parchment-paper, 25 cents. 

Year Book. With Portrait. i8mo, ^i.oo. 

Text and Verse. For Every Day in the Year. Scrip- 
ture Passages and Parallel Selections from Whit- 
tier's Writings. 32mo, 75 cents. 

EDITED BY MR. WHITTIER 

Songs of Three Centuries. Library Edition. With 
40 full-page Illustrations. 8vo, gilt top, $2.50. 

Household Edition. Much enlarged. Crown 8vo, $1.50. 
Child-Life. A Collection of Poems for and about 

Children. Finely Illustrated. Crown 8vo, gilt top, 

$2.00. 

Child-Life in Prose. A Volume of Stories, Fancies, 
and Memories of Child-Life. Finely Illustrated. 
Crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. 

Many of the above editions may be had in leather 
bindings of various styles. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY 
4 Park Street, Boston. 85 Fifth Ave., New York 



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